Sam Dixon’s talent pool as a gifted bassist, writer and producer has been tapped by the likes of Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, David Holmes, and Corrine Bailey Rae. Beyond his session work, he’s also maintained a long-standing songwriting partnership with fellow Australian Sia Furler.

Together, they co-wrote and produced Christina Aguilera's Bound to You, which earned a Best Original Song nomination at the 2011 Golden Globe Awards. He also received a Grammy Award for his contribution to Adele's 25, which won Album of the Year in 2017.

When Bass Player last caught up with Dixon in March 2021, he attributed his success as a session player to an ability to leave his musical ego at the door.

“As a bass player, it’s rarely about you. You’re there to do what’s right for the artist and the material. It’s like being an actor, knowing how to play that role.”

Having arrived in London with just his mainstay Fender Jazz Bass, Dixon now has a studio’s worth of vintage gear, including a Silvertone, and a Harmony H2.

“I’ve always wanted to have a selection of basses to be able to recreate different sounds from records or players I love. I always say, ‘Look, you’re a musician and this is your craft, it’s what you do! You need to have good instruments to do your job.’ That’s always been my justification anyway!

“I’ve been lucky to be in the right place at the right time and I’ve been able to snag some great basses at reasonable prices. So it’s just kind of happened.”

Going back to his main bass, a 1969 Fender Jazz … “The original owner was a schoolteacher and it had been under her bed for 15 years in its case!”

“I’d started out on some cheaper Japanese-made basses, but was going out in Sydney and hearing other gigs and knowing that my sound wasn’t anywhere near as nice as some of the other players.

“I was really into Bootsy Collins when he was playing with James Brown and the sound of his Jazz Bass on those recordings was just awesome. I was lucky enough to have a friend who worked in a bass guitar store in Sydney – this was 1994 – and he found this bass guitar for me.

“It’s so versatile. You can make it sound like a P-Bass if you want, or really zingy. It responds to different playing styles. It sounds great with flatwounds too – like on this track called Little Black Sandals.

“There’s just something about that bass: it can sound really modern and clean and new, but at the same time it can sound like what it actually is, an instrument that’s been around since the late ’60s.”

Despite the Precision Bass having earned iconic status, Dixon believes the Jazz Bass remains the go-to choice for generations of recording bassists.

“Sometimes I get the impression that a Jazz Bass isn’t as cool as a Precision and that it’s sneered at a little, but it’s such a versatile instrument and there’s a lot more of them on record than people think.

“I’m pretty sure it’s what McCartney played on almost all The White Album, and there’s Joe Osborn who played on all those great records. He did all of his playing with a Jazz with the back pickup and tone control rolled off – that was his sound.

“I played my ‘69 on Sia’s Clap Your Hands and Put Your Records On by Corinne Bailey Rae.

“It’s funny because it’s the one bass I keep coming back to all the time. I’ll have periods away from it, and it might not always be the most appropriate bass for a track recording-wise, but I always find myself playing it again.”

That said, there are sessions where only a P-Bass will get the job done. In those moments, Dixon reaches for a pre-CBS 1960 Precision.

‘It’s beat to death but has that amazing played-in feeling that only beat-to-death Fenders can seem to get – especially the worn-down back of the neck. It’s not a pristine collector’s guitar, but it’s perfect for life on the road. It’s also blessed with the thick slab rosewood fretboard which Fender used from 1959 till mid 1962.”

Other firm favourites in Dixon’s collection include a 1969 Fender Mustang, a 1967 Silvertone Dolphin Bass and his 1964 Harmony H22.

“That’s a fantastic bass. There’s some ridiculous statistic that in the ’60s the company behind Harmony made more guitars than Fender and Gibson combined. They were made to be sold in supermarkets and department stores, and when you pick them up they kind of feel like that.

“Compared to a Fender or a Gibson from that period, they feel a bit flimsy and really light, but it’s great to have something that’s not your typical Fender or Music Man tone, something really different.

“I used it on tracks like Ludlow Street by Suzanne Vega and Sing Me To Sleep by Fran Healy.

“The Silvertone brand was used by the Sears chain for their line of instruments, amps and hi-fis from the 1930s through to the early ’70s. Harmony, Kay, National, Teisco and Danelectro all made instruments for Sears, which would be then badged ‘Silvertone.’

“My one was made by Danelectro and its semi-hollow masonite body, wood saddled bridge and lipstick pickup give it a really honky, resonant tone. It’s also short-scale and I’ve got reasonably light strings on there, making the tension quite slack, so it’s great fun to play.”

Keith Richards has reflected on the Rolling Stones' latest collaboration with Paul McCartney, revealing why he thinks it meant so much to the legendary Beatle.

Macca guested on the Stones’ rip-roaring 2023 track, Bite My Head Off, from Hackney Diamonds. And, on their latest album, Foreign Tongues, which releases today (July 10), McCartney guested on Covered In You.

Richards thinks he knows why McCartney, who has largely gone solo since the end of the Beatles, was so willing to get his hands dirty with the Stones.

“I’ve realized that Paul really misses being in a band,” he tells Zane Lowe for Apple Music. “His joy of just being in that context is great. So if there’s any more songs to do, I’ll let you know, Paul.

“I’ve known Paul for well, basically, since The Beatles started, since we started, but only on the periphery,” Richards continues. “John [Lennon] and Paul did a couple of backup vocals for us way back when on We Love You and Dandelion, I think way back in 1967.

“But otherwise, it’s also great to have somebody from your own era, from way back when. He’s a lovely player, and I’d like to do more with him.”

McCartney himself has spoken about the fun he had in the studio with Richards and the Stones for Foreign Tongues.

Speaking to the BBC for the release of his own latest solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, McCartney confirms that recording with the Rolling Stones was the chance of a lifetime. And he loved every second of it.

“I showed up as a session player,” Macca said. “It was a really good feeling, because I wasn’t a star, I was just the bass player. I’m standing there playing, and I’m thinking, ‘I’m playing with the Stones!’ I should be blasé and say, ‘I’ve known them for years,’ but it was special.

“You better believe when I got home that evening, I said, ‘I’ve just played with the Stones. I loved it!’”

Though McCartney jumped at the opportunity, not all artists approached by the Stones were as forthcoming. Jeff Beck famously turned the band down, for instance.

But other music icons have readily accepted, and Foreign Tongues is proof. It's credits list includes the Cure’s Robert Smith and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, Bruno Mars, and more. It’s quite the cast list.

Foreign Tongues is out today via Polydor Records.

For their most recent respective releases, The Rolling Stones and Beatles bassist Paul McCartney shared a producer – i.e., producer to the stars, Andrew Watt. Not only that, though, Macca is reportedly the one laying down the low end on an upcoming Stones track, titled Covered in You, from their upcoming album (out July 10), Foreign Tongues.

“You could be a bit blasé and go, ‘Yeah, OK, so what?’ But for me, it wasn’t – it went the other way,” McCartney told NME.

“It was like, ‘Wow, there’s Mick [Jagger]! Ooh, there’s Keith [Richards]! Woah, there’s Ronnie [Wood]!’ It was exciting. It was really good. A great thing is all I had to do was play bass and not make mistakes, so it was good.”

As for Jagger, the Stones' iconic frontman revealed that the new tune required more of a “funk bass part.”

“Obviously, I’ve known Paul for ages. He’s not a stranger, but he’s never played bass with us before,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s a different thing, you know?

“I said to Andy [Watt, producer], ‘Is he gonna be into this? Because it’s a punk tune and I want overdriven bass. It’s gonna be simple, no mucking about.’ And Paul did exactly what was needed in, like, 10 minutes.”

Now, McCartney did also play bass on Bite My Head Off, from the Stones' 2023 album, Hackney Diamonds (some Foreign Tongues tracks date back to those sessions), but these instances didn't mark the first time the two collaborated.

The Macca-Lennon powerhouse wrote the Stones’ second single, I Wanna Be Your Man, back in 1963, while the late Brian Jones also contributed to the Beatles' Yellow Submarine. Jagger, meanwhile, contributed backing vocals to Baby, You’re a Rich Man.

Another instance where the two bands collided was when members of the Beatles and the Stones did a legendary one-off performance together as part of the TV spectacular, the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, where Lennon and Richards played the Beatles’ Yer Blues in the temporary supergroup the Dirty Mac – alongside Eric Clapton and Mitch Mitchell.

In more recent news, Paul McCartney recently challenged fans to work out the mystery guitar chord that inspired his new album – and, here at Guitar World, we figured it out.

Round-table interviews with rockstars always carry a risk. You can make the intros. Dim the lights. But if the chemistry doesn’t fire, it can feel like forcing giant pandas to mate.

Fortunately, as pan-generational giants of US jazz, Al Di Meola and Julian Lage have long admired each other’s work, and while the 71-year-old Di Meola remains a New Jersey tough-guy with a palpable nostalgia for the old industry, offset by the 38-year-old Lage’s more abstract take on the craft and business, we’re soon off to the races.

All that’s left to do is run the dictaphone, tee up a hot topic – from YouTube shredders to the instrument’s next quantum leap – and catch the flying sparks.

Let’s start with the state of the art. There were once clearly defined new frontiers for guitar, from electric blues right through to shred and beyond. Do you still feel there’s a new frontier for the instrument?

Al Di Meola: Well, there seems to be a whole new generation of great players coming up. But as advanced as a lot of them are, I sometimes feel bad that they’re not in the glory days of the record industry any more. And as great of a record as they make, most of us won’t know about it.

You almost feel like, “Man, you missed out on the best ever,” y’know? The brilliance is unbelievable, but I can’t associate them with an album or piece of music. Unlike when we came up in the mid-’70s, when you’d think of Weather Report and then you’d think of Heavy Weather.

There’s more killers out there than ever before. I’m glad I’m not starting now! It’s a good thing I have a little bit of an accumulation of what could be a legacy, like, 30-something albums, and I’m like, “Okay, phew, I got that done.”

Julian Lage: I think you’re right. Granted, I don’t know what the best days of the recording industry were, and I do think it’s a different topography nowadays, [but] I think everything swings back and forth, y’know? I’m not expecting the record industry to go back to what it was, but the desire to take in music the way we all received it years ago – I think that’s coming back.

What would you say are the big obstacles for guitar players these days?

Di Meola: Here’s the big issue that doesn’t get talked about. Back then, before cellphones and computers, we practised way more. And it was way more focused on the songs. For instance, I made an album about 15 years ago at the Power Station in New York. And I noticed, as soon as we were done with the track, which was killer, everybody ran out in the hallway.

Now, back in the day, everybody would run into the control room to hear their performance. But everybody was on their phone, like, networking, y’know? And I said, “This is not right.” We went as far as to tell the receptionist to hold all calls.

That phone is always right there, within arm’s length. We got addicted to something that we can’t break. But back in the time when we didn’t need it because it didn’t exist, our focus on our work was phenomenal. Like when I did The Guitar Trio with John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucía: the first tour, we were in our hotel rooms practising for the show that night because we knew we had to be up on our game.

There was no “let me check my phone”. And when I listen to those records, I cannot do what the hell I did back then now. Not that I want to, by the way. Velocity isn’t my number one desire. I’ve been devoting more time to composing.

Is it more helpful to have constraints or freedom when you’re creating music?

Di Meola: My record company gave me, on my last record, as much time as I wanted. And I went, “Boy, that’s a good thing and a bad thing.” Because in the days when they had deadlines for shipments, you had to be done no matter what. In a way, it was good to have that pressure. Otherwise, you start experimenting, doing so many different things, and then you go, “Wait, let me listen to those early takes” – and you already had it.

Lage: I’ve never made a record in more than a few days, ever in my life. It’s always been one or two days, or three days if you really have a big budget and everyone’s available. But I have re-made records. I once made a two-day record, and a month later I realised I wasn’t happy with it – I changed everything about it, and I did another two days. But my perception of what’s a limiting or liberating factor isn’t always accurate.

I can see a situation presenting all these challenges, then in retrospect I look back and realise I had complete freedom. And vice versa: there have been times when I thought, “I have all this freedom, why am I not getting anything I like?” So I can’t say I’m the most solid barometer of what’s helping me and what’s limiting me.

Di Meola: The barometer, Julian, is when you record something, and you want to hear it over and over. I recorded a whole record called The Infinite Desire [1998] and at the end I just didn’t feel like hearing it. So I wound up re-recording the whole record. It took a lot of guts, it took some extra money, whatever, but I gotta like what I do. Then again, I am talking about a different time with better budgets than what we see on our horizon, which is like, “Holy shit.” It looks massively different now.

Guitar virtuosity can be a double-edged sword. What does it mean to you, in its most positive and negative sense?

Di Meola: It’s a balance, man. It’s the variety. It’s the ingredients you put in the soup. If it’s all velocity, it’s overkill. Not that I haven’t been accused of that a few times. But it should be a story within a story. Velocity for velocity’s sake is not the key.

It’s about the lines you play and how they meet one another. There was a big emphasis on velocity back in the ’70s. It was insane, but luckily I was with Chick Corea and playing some meaty compositions in the context of displaying whatever youthful velocity I had at the time.

You need a composition. There’s no two ways about it. If a guy’s only playing licks, they might be phenomenal licks, but what’s it pertaining to? So I have, over the years, been paying less attention to technique and more to developing as a composer because that’s what keeps the attention of the audience. Soloing is an aspect of it, but that’s not going to hold many in the audience.

The worst thing in the world is if you hear [an ambitious part] in your head and it comes out sloppy. So that’s where the ability to play technically – at the moment you hear it in your head – is important. Because there’s nothing worse than sloppy.

What’s your take on the virtuosity debate, Julian?

Lage: I feel the same way about that balance, y’know? My definition of virtuosity has definitely changed over the years. I think, especially in my generation, there’s often a coyness about virtuosity.

Like, you might have the ability to do it, but you don’t because that would be too forward or something. And I’ve had some pitfalls, where I maybe had the ability to play something but didn’t do it at a moment when it would actually have been good for the music. I’ve definitely shifted my perspective on that. Anybody who’s in service of the music, with whatever skills they have at their disposal, I think they’re using it responsibly and beautifully.

And as Al said, it’s as much about space as it is about velocity or density or harmonic complexity, or whatever it might be. You know, I hear Julian Bream, and I think that’s the mastery level I dream of. Or I think Jim Hall is one of the great virtuosos. He was so self-effacing and maybe never thought of himself as ‘that player’, but his mastery over space and time, you can’t tell me that’s not the highest level of virtuosity.

But I don’t think there’s anything offensive about a kind of rudderless virtuosity, either. I just don’t think it does anything for you as a player.

How do you stay in touch with the spirit of music when you play, rather than just mechanically operating the guitar?

Lage: I come from a couple of different traditions of players that really celebrate the kind of kinaesthetic experience of playing the guitar. You think of someone like Derek Bailey, or even Fripp, for that matter. Y’know, players who create sound with an instrument using their gestures, but in an unusual way, and there’s something that feels good about it.

I’ve just never been someone who’s good at warm-ups or ratcheting things up to a certain level. I’m rather rough around the edges in those respects, to be honest. But I play a lot of guitar, and things show up. After an hour of playing, I feel different than after 10 minutes, and different again than after four hours of playing.

If something’s still not coming together, I’ll take a moment and work on it. But not too much. When I was younger, I practised maniacally – and it was good, but I could hear in my own playing, especially on the bandstand, that I was someone who practised a lot, and that was a different thing than the players I was looking up to, who just kind of emanated this thing.

So I made a decision to kind of chill out a little bit, so it didn’t sound like I was preparing all day for something. If I played different music that required it, that would be different. But I’m involved in group improvisation music and songs that are more from the Americana tradition. It’s a different swagger.

You both have a love and appreciation for the acoustic guitar. What do you get from that instrument that you don’t get from the electric?

Di Meola: Well, rhythm is one. The way I’d approach playing rhythm on acoustic guitar is different than with an electric. Electric is more of a voice; it’s like a singer, there’s more lyrical possibilities that you don’t have with an acoustic. But the nature of my compositions signal the necessity of playing with my nylon Spanish guitar because there’s a lot of arpeggiated, rhythmic, syncopated things.

Plus, in some ways, I’ve exhausted the louder electric days. Even though I’m trying to keep it alive, my tendencies over the last 30 years have been going more and more for this acoustic ensemble. Whether it’s a trio or quartet or quintet, it’s just the way it’s gone due to aging and maturity. And the music has gotten deeper as a result.

I feel like I’m more and more into the acoustic camp overall. I got that bug back when I was playing with Paco. With my own band, we had 10 tons of equipment and we’d be rolling up these cases to the airport check-in counter, and they’d weigh it all and at the end they’d charge me $13,000 because it was so overweight.

I’d be crying sometimes, like, “Please, give us a break!” And then I’d watch Paco. Not even a spare guitar. He had his cigarettes in his suitcase, one shirt for a tour. One! I asked him: “Paco, how do you have one shirt?” One day, I caught him in the bathroom, and he had his shirt off and he was taping paper towels under his armpits. I said, “Why are you doing that?” And he said: “One shirt!”

What does the acoustic guitar mean to you, Julian?

Lage: I think of myself as an acoustic player first and foremost. Anything I’ve ever done on electric is kind of an extension of that same sound. But they are different. The electric basically implies that I’m playing with an ensemble, so my role is more one of orchestration – how I contribute to the sound and how I fit between the bass and the drums.

And acoustic is usually more something I would be doing if it was just me, and that is a bit more ‘Technicolor’, frankly. I hear such a wide range of frequencies because nothing’s covering it up. No other sound is there.

So, in my head, acoustic is the louder, more luscious sonic world, and the electric is a little more penned-in, but it kinda threads a needle through an ensemble. I always wanted to have that experience of an electric being this kind of unleashed voice. But it’s just not my constitution. I don’t like loud sounds. I don’t want to play loud.

Julian, you’ve just played in London at the Royal Festival Hall, and Al, you’ll play the Barbican in June. What does the city and its music scene mean to you?

Di Meola: I haven’t been to London in a good five years. So there’s a lot of anticipation for the show. I have a lot of reasons to love London. I once did a tribute record to The Beatles at Abbey Road, and that was one of the highlights of my career.

I felt like a five-year-old at Disney World. It was so great to be in the same environment and tell the engineer: “Pro Tools? No, no, no, I want to go 8-track analogue. Y’know, like the other group that recorded here?”

I did three tracks and I was very happy with the sound. Like, “Wow, that studio really is something.” Then I went back to New York to try to finish it. But I couldn’t match it sonically, so I knew I had to go back.

But before I went back, I rented a house in the Hamptons to really focus on arranging the rest of the pieces. And it just so happens that my next-door neighbour was Paul McCartney. We got to talking, you know, but I never told him who I was. I had this fear that maybe he wouldn’t know me.

But the next year, I rented the house again and by then I had the finished product. And my wife said, “Why don’t you write him a little note about what The Beatles meant to you growing up?” So I stuck the note in the CD case, and when he pulled into the drive in his brown Rolls Royce, she said, “Go down there, give him the CD.” I said, “Oh no, I can’t.” She goes, “Give me that thing!” She runs down – and I was so impressed that she did that for me. It was just a beautiful memory that will live with me.

• Al Di Meola plays the Barbican in London on June 25. For more information on the guitarists’ latest projects and forthcoming tour dates, visit Al Di Meola and Julian Lage.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Sometimes you can be over rehearsed. You know the material too well. Sometimes you just have to embrace the panic of not knowing what you are going to play, to just go with it.

The late Henry McCullough could testify to that. He had enjoyed a stellar career, jamming with Jimi Hendrix, working his magic in the Grease Band, playing in Spooky Tooth and alongside Denny Laine as Paul McCartney’s six-string lieutenant in Wings.

But many would argue his solo to My Love was his finest hour – and it was a hinge moment in Wings’ history.

Hitherto, McCartney’s say was final. He was the master of all he surveyed. There was a sense that he needed a guitarist only because playing bass, singing and playing guitar at the same time was even beyond the powers of the Beatle.

He had his own ideas of how the solo would go down for My Love and so it came as a bit of a shock when McCullough suggested he wanted to play something different. Also, he didn’t know what that exactly was.

“I mentioned to Paul that I wanted to change whatever was suggested,” McCullough told Classic Rock Here and Now in 2012. “The conversation between Paul and I went like this: ‘What are you gonna’ play?’ ‘I don't know.’ ‘You don't know what you’re gonna play?’ ‘No.’”

Well, that settled that. Some players come alive when the red light’s on, others fall to pieces. You’ve got to imagine that it could go either way for most players.

However McCullough felt ordinarily, he was not wholly unaware of the kind of setting this was in. He was working with a Beatle, one half of the greatest songwriting partnership that in popular music’s young history, and the producer who found the Fab Four a sound, in Studio Two at Abbey Road

“Now, there’s Paul, George Martin et cetera in the control room, a 50 piece orchestra waiting on me in the studio,” recalled McCullough. Not only did he have to record his solo – which the aforementioned exchange with McCartney establishes, he did not have ready – he had to do it with an orchestral accompaniment.

You don’t want to be that guy, the one out of 51 players to screw up the take. McCullough had his Les Paul, maybe a cold sweat, too, and stepped up.

“So, in I went and plugged in the Gold Top, took a deep breath, and when I exhaled it was all over, a bit like going to the dentist,” he said. “It was a one take wonder, a gift from God? I don’t know…”

Everyone else was made to sweat over the track. The record says that 20-odd takes were done. It was easy listening and a slog to record. But McCullough just needed one. There was magic in the room

“Somebody, something happened,” he said. “Everybody saw it, felt it. Ask Sir Paul and I think you would get a similar answer.”

Released as a single, My Love topped the Billboard 100. And McCartney knew he had a band he could rely on to contribute.

When Paul McCartney picked Lagos, Nigeria, as the location to record Wings’ third album, Band on the Run, he envisioned an extended sun-drenched holiday – interspersed with studio sessions, of course.

However, the sessions were marred by a series of less-than-ideal events: drummer Denny Seiwell and guitarist Henry McCullough left the group, the political situation in Nigeria was tense following the end of a civil war, and the McCartneys were robbed at knifepoint.

Macca also suffered a bronchial spasm, which was brought about by too much smoking.

The silver lining of it all, however, was the beginning of his friendship with Afrobeat progenitor and Nigerian music legend Fela Kuti. Admittedly, it got off to a rocky start after Kuti and his entourage headed to EMI Studios, where McCartney was recording, to question him about his intentions in Nigeria.

“The first thing [that] happened to me was, I was accused of stealing the Black man's music,” McCartney said in an interview published on the official Fela Kuti YouTube channel.

“[They said] ‘He's come here to steal the music,’ so I said, ‘Who's doing that? It’s in the newspaper.’ It was Fela, of course.

“So I got his number, I rang him up, [and said], ‘Hey, man, come on. I'm not here to do that. I love African music. I just want the kind of atmosphere, but I'm certainly not stealing any of your music.’

“He came around to the studio, and I played him all my stuff, and he said, ‘Nothing like African Music.’ So we became good friends.”

Soon after this encounter, McCartney ended up frequenting the Afrika Shrine, the legendary club in Lagos that Kuti set up in 1970.

“I wasn't gonna get wasted,” the Beatle recalls in a recent interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music, “but because it was very much the thing to do with Fela – I was with Ginger Baker, too – I was trying to resist. The guys were coming up, offering joints out. I said ‘Okay, I'm good, thank you.’”

McCartney was successfully resisting the temptation until a pivotal moment

“The guy went up to Ginger, and Ginger takes a smoke. Fela comes over to him, claps an arm around him, he said, ‘Ginger Baker, the only man I know never refuse a smoke.’ So I go, ‘Well, yeah, okay….’ and I got wrecked, paranoid, the whole thing.

“And so I was in a state until his band came on,” he admits, “and then they just hit this riff that I still remember, and it was incredible, and I just wept. That was an experience I could never forget. I still know the riff.”

In more recent news, McCartney explained how his new album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, was inspired by his songwriting partnership with John Lennon.

Paul McCartney is inviting fans to work out the “wacky chord” that inspired his new solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane – and it's sparked a hearty debate online.

The nostalgic album is Macca's first in six years, and was written and recorded with mega-producer Andrew Watt. As the legendary Beatle reveals via Instagram, their very first session together proved fruitful and set the tone for the entire record.

“I’ve got a little story about a chord you might like,” he says, acoustic guitar in his lap. “I was due to meet Andrew Watt for the first time at his studio in LA. I went down there, and we had a cup of tea.

“I was chatting and talking about music, and I said, ‘Sometimes I like to start the idea for a song with a wacky chord – a chord I don’t know. Sometimes that inspires me and gets me into a song.’ So, he lent me a guitar, and I played the wacky chord.”

The chord, which stacks C, Eb, and B on top of a lower D note, opens the album on As You Lie There. That mystery chord then runs into the rest of the progression, that high B descending to an A (all other notes the same) and then a G top note on a G chord (G/D). It is certainly colorful, with the complex voicing evoking the Beatles at their most harmonically vibrant.

“But what is it?” McCartney asks his fans. “Do you know the wacky chord?”

It has got fans hotly debating to define the chord. Some argue it's a Cmmaj7/D. Others are convinced it is a D13b9, since the D note root is anchored in place and ultimately resolves on that G note; it has a D-like feel.

Guitar World's Senior Music Editor Jimmy Brown agrees with the latter, identifying the mystery chord as a D13b9(no3). That's then followed by a D7b9(no3) and a G/D to complete the three-chord progression.

On the flipside, Jason Sidwell, Guitar World's Tuition Editor, is in the former camp, naming the chord as Cmmaj7/D(no5). Likewise, that second chord is identified as Cm6/D(no5), with the progression finalised by that G/D.

The joy of a chord like this is its sonic ambiguity, meaning it can be interpreted in different ways, at the will of the songwriter. As one user says, Paul takes the peculiar chord and brings it all into focus.

Watt has said that the chord, which was new to McCartney’s ears, became the backbone of the album, proving that, no matter how experienced a player you are, there are always mysteries waiting to be discovered on the fretboard.

In related Macca news, the legendary songwriter recently recalled the time he gave Paul Mescal a guitar lesson in prep for the upcoming Beatles biopics – but his services were redundant.

Given that Paul Mescal is set to play a young Paul McCartney in the upcoming Beatles biopics, the actor had a lot of homework to do before the cameras started rolling.

The prep process included learning to play left-handed for accuracy – task that afforded him a guitar lesson the Beatle himself. But it turns out that he’d toiled away for so long that by the time the pair met up, the master-apprentice dynamic had been flipped on its head.

“He came into this office, and I thought, ‘Well, I’ll show him how to do Blackbird,’” McCartney tells the BBC. “So I picked up the guitar and started playing, and he played along exactly! I think he knew it better than I did!”

Acclaimed director Sam Mendes (Skyfall, 1917, Jarhead) is spearheading four Beatles biopics, with each one focusing on a different Beatle and all releasing across 2028. It’s been reported that Mescal, who has already impressed GW with his guitar and vocal talents, is also singing his own vocals for the films.

He isn’t taking the gig lightly, and McCartney has recognized the work that’s gone on behind the scenes.

“It was amazing how studied and how well-educated he was about me,” the Beatle applauds. “So, thought, ‘OK, I’ll leave you to it.’”

McCartney, meanwhile, is set to release his latest solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, tomorrow (May 30). The music and memory of John Lennon was a key inspiration for the record, which looks to be a nostalgic late-career win for the legendary songwriter.

The Beatles films are set to drop amid a slew of music biopics, with an Ozzy film in the works, alongside the cinemized stories of B.B. King and Rosetta Tharpe.

These follow Greta Van Fleet starring in the recent Bruce Springsteen biopic, and Timothée Chalamet playing a score of top-of-the-line Gibsons while portraying Bob Dylan on the big screen – and the film’s producers had a clever way to make the guitars sound even more Dylan.

At 35, producer Andrew Watt has an enviable roster of clients-turned-collaborators, including the late Ozzy Osbourne, Elton John, the Rolling Stones, Pearl Jam, and Iggy Pop, just to name a select few.

But someone he never expected to reach out to use his services? Well, a Beatle – specifically, Paul McCartney.

“Just saying that sounds like a fake statement,” Watt tells The Telegraph. Or, as he aptly puts it, “I am the luckiest fucker to be in the room with people who changed my life before I ever met them.”

Indeed, right before Watt met McCartney, he instructed his assistant to do something a little bit different…

“I literally had to tell him to slap me. Paul McCartney was coming to my house in Beverly Hills to have tea… As a child, I knew every Beatles song, I studied every Beatles chord – I couldn’t really fathom that a Beatle was about to be in my kitchen.

“I needed a slap, right?” he quips.

The result of the Watt-McCartney collaboration is on full display on the Beatle’s upcoming album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane. The two worked together for around five years, slotting in sessions around McCartney’s touring schedule.

“Working with Paul was like being a student at college, every day watching him bounce around the studio like a scientist in a laboratory,” describes Watt.

“Watching him go between each instrument, arrange background vocals, and see how he layers the harmony, how he records drums – he knows not to hit the cymbals as hard because he wants to compress the overhead mic to get his kit sound… I mean, it’s mastery on another level.”

Watt recalls recording the song Home to Us, a heartfelt duet between McCartney and Ringo Starr that's part of the new album, as a particularly moving experience.

“I will never forget looking across the sound booth in the studio and seeing Paul smiling, and I’m playing guitar to Ringo’s drums. I mean, that was probably the craziest moment in my life,” he concludes.

In a recent interview, McCartney explained how John Lennon is still inspiring his songwriting six decades on.

With Paul McCartney releasing his first solo album in over five years, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, and the Beatles’ four-film biopic’s main cast already announced, it seems only natural that the actor who’s transforming into Macca – Paul Mescal – had a chat with the legend about his songwriting process. And luckily for the rest of us, it was captured on camera.

“I teach some kids up in my old school in Liverpool, and that's like the first thing [they ask]. I don't know how to do this, which is not very inspiring. I haven’t got a formula,” McCartney tells Mescal.

“They used to ask me and John [Lennon], ‘How’d you do it? Who writes the music, who writes the words?’ I don’t know. To me, I think any story or song you’re gonna do, it’s gotta involve memory. With the Beatles, we always tried to write something different.”

Lennon still serves as a source of inspiration for McCartney – especially considering his upcoming album turns a lens inward and revisits the formative years that not only shaped his own life but the very foundation of the Beatles.

“I ran into this guy called John Lennon, and he was kind of fighting life,” he reminisces of his collaborator., whose first single, Love Me Do, was released in 1962.

“He'd had a lot of trouble. His dad had left home, his mom had got run over… so he was putting up a shield, so he's very witty, very biting. And then when it came to writing, that kind of relationship stayed there.

“So on this record, I might even refer to him in my mind, as if we're still writing together. I'll write something and go, ‘What's that? Is that any good?’”

“And you're talking to him?” inquires Mescal.

“Kind of,” the older Paul affirms. “In my mind. Sometimes I get away with it. Sometimes you say, ‘No, it's shit.’ Well, his spirit’s sort of still in me, and I’m very glad of that.”

The first Lennon-McCartney Beatles single, Love Me Do, was released in 1962. Their final collaboration, Now and Then, was released in November 2023.

The full conversation is available on Amazon Live and in the Amazon Music app.

The Boys of Dungeon Lane is out on May 29 via MPL/Capitol Records.

In his 1995 Bass Player cover story, Paul McCartney said his prize period on bass guitar was around Rubber Soul and Sgt. Pepper, where he could put all his energy into the song and bassline, as opposed to his “okay” bass playing in Wings, due to his having numerous hats to wear, ranging from bandleader to business manager.

Guitarist Laurence Juber, whose career as a London and then Los Angeles session musician is separated by his two-year stint with Wings, begged to differ.

“Paul wrote a lot of great music and played a lot of terrific bass with Wings that is still under-appreciated,” said Juber in the October 2013 issue of Bass Player. “Some of it I don't think he even recognizes himself, yet.”

McCartney’s bassline for Silly Love Songs, which spent five weeks at No. 1 on the U.S. charts, is a case in point.

The track, from the album Wings at the Speed of Sound, was recorded at Abbey Road Studios in January and February 1976. Criticized and taunted by the music press and John Lennon alike for writing “lightweight” songs, McCartney wrote it as a biting response, later cutting a more techno-oriented version featuring Louis Johnson on bass for the 1984 film Give My Regards to Broad Street.

Based on his later studio experience with Wings, Juber confirmed that Paul played his flatwound-strung Rickenbacker 4001S with a heavy-gauge pick, likely both direct and through a miked Fender Bassman, with a Fairchild Compressor on all bass tracks.

Denny Laine and Jimmy McCulloch on guitars, and drummer Joe English on drums rounded out the rhythm section, with keyboards, vocals, a four-piece horn section, and strings all added later.

What stands out about Silly Love Songs as compared to McCartney's Beatle bass anthem, Come Together, where the one-bar bass figure snakes around the vocals, or his 1979 Wings bass tour de force, Goodnight Tonight, where the busy bassline answers and fills in between the sparse vocal line, is that the vocal and bassline run together in counterpoint.

That's a key aspect to Juber, who covered Silly Love Songs on solo guitar for his 2005 album, One Wing.

“Paul's gift for singing and playing a bassline in counterpoint is remarkable. One of my favorite Paul McCartney bass parts is on his first solo single, Another Day, where at times the bass and vocals move in parallel sevenths. When counterpoint is done well like that it can drift outside of strict church harmony, and that's where the personality really emerges.”

Silly Love Songs begins with eight bars of a simulated assembly line, perhaps a symbolic precursor to the driving, repetitive bassline and four-on-the-floor drum pulse that lie ahead. Four more bars of intro allude to the bassline shape, which takes its full four-bar form at the first verse.

Interestingly, McCartney’s vocal is a three-bar phrase, leaving the fourth bar open for bass; however, the bar 4 bassline is actually finishing a two-bar phrase that begins under the Fmaj 7 chord in bar 3.

Two key elements are McCartney's use of chromatic passing notes, which help the melodic flow of the line (a device he has always employed, as a fan of Tin Pan Alley songs), and his interesting application of short and long notes.

“Paul plays with a very hard touch onstage, but he has a real sensitivity to dynamics and note duration in the studio. Even though the basic sequence of C Em7 Fmaj7 repeats in both the verses and choruses, the ear doesn't tire of it because he doesn't use a heavier, final-sounding, dominant V chord cadence.”

For the first chorus, at 01:02, McCartney keeps the same driving bassline, while the vocals pare down to whole notes. His use of up-and-down strokes with a pick is revealed via his 16th-note pickup at 01:32.

The bridge arrives with a unison riff that answers the vocal before building over the last five bars. The horn soli gives way to the breakdown at 03:12. As the vocals get more contrapuntal, the bass builds to a root-5th-octave pattern.

The horn soli reprises at 03:42, leading into a more minimal breakdown at 04:13, without bass for a bit (listen around 04:43 for bass panned way left and in the distance). The buildup involves McCartney's Latin bass figure again and a trick horn soli that lasts only four bars.

Finally, the song returns to a verse at 05:22, ending exotically on the III minor chord – “the most bittersweet chord in the C major scale,” noted Juber.

Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles exhibit at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, titled “Paul McCartney and Wings,” is supposed to open in two days (May 15). However, it is now being alleged that the guitars that were supposed to be part of the exhibit haven’t yet made their way to Cleveland.

According to Page Six, seven of McCartney’s guitars have been stuck in customs in London, since they’re made out of Brazilian rosewood and therefore fall under the remit of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) – a multilateral treaty entered into force on July 1, 1975 that, as per UNESCO, ensures “international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival.”

“They’ve been stuck in London customs for a month,” an unnamed source reportedly told Page Six. “The tree is endangered, so you can no longer use it, but it’s the best wood you can use for sound and acoustics.”

However, an insider also told the publication there has been some movement in order to ensure the guitars reach their destination in time for the opening.

The guitars are part of the Beatles bassist's personal collection, and therefore a crucial part of the upcoming exhibit, which marks the first time that a major museum exhibition will explore the story of McCartney and Wings.

According to Rock Hall, it’s set to feature “the most extensive collection of items from McCartney’s personal archives to ever be made accessible to the public, as well as donations from band members and associates.”

It will also include “instruments played in Wings’ recording sessions and in concert performances, clothing worn by the band, handwritten lyrics, original artwork, tour memorabilia, and previously unseen photography”, all presented within an immersive audio-visual experience.

Guitar World has reached out to McCartney's representatives and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for comment.

In more recent news, Macca has announced his first solo album in five years, The Boys of Dungeon Lane – inspired by a mysterious guitar chord and a cup of tea with Andrew Watt.

When James Taylor was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the turn of the century with three Grammys to his name, the legendary folk rock singer-songwriter had the Beatles to thank for kickstarting his career.

After all, he got his first real taste of success when the Fab Four signed him to their label, Apple Records. Following a year or so of trying to make it in New York with his band, the Flying Machine, the group “starved to death”, and Taylor looked to new shores for new opportunities.

“After the band dissolved in New York City, I went home to North Carolina to sort of recover and lick my wounds for a while,” Taylor tells Jimmy Kimmel in a new interview.

“Then, not knowing what else to do, I talked my folks into buying me a plane ticket to go visit a friend who lived in London. I took my guitar and some songs, and I ran into some people who were enthusiastic about my music. They convinced me to make a little demo.

“My friends and I started sort of shopping these around, and eventually, I got in touch with Peter Asher,” he continues. “I went over to his house, played through some songs I had, and as luck would have it, he had just taken on a job as the head of A&R. He was looking for new talent to sign to Apple Records.”

Established in 1968, Apple Records was founded by none other than the Beatles.

Speaking to Guitar World about what happened after his meeting with Asher, he once detailed: “Peter and his wife really heard something in my music. And he took me to Apple, where I played for George and Paul.

“I had some kind of competence and the arrogance of youth when auditioning for George Harrison and Paul McCartney, without which nobody would ever do anything, because you'd hedge your bets.”

Needless to say, he did enough to score a record deal and recorded his self-titled debut album with the help of both Harrison and McCartney, in the same studio the band had committed the White Album to tape.

For a musician whose previous creative project had “starved to death” just years earlier, it was a remarkable turnaround, and one that set him on the path to becoming one of his generation's greatest songwriters.

Something in the Way She Moves, which would get a public release in 1968, was included on that demo tape, and by the time Fire and Rain – which peaked at number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned him his first Grammy – dropped in 1970, his career was more than up and running.

In related news, GW's Neville Marten has penned a heartfelt piece explaining what he learned from interviewing the acoustic icon.

At just 32, Matthieu Lucas has managed to build something extraordinary.

The entrepreneur, guitarist, and music enthusiast has painstakingly chipped away at building the emporium that is Matt’s Guitar Shop from the ground up, attracting A-list clients from all four corners of the globe.

The journey was far from plain sailing. However, judging by the caliber of artist guitars gracing every inch of the walls in this slice of musical paradise – tucked away on an unassuming street in Paris – it has well and truly paid off.

“It was not easy because you just show up at a store, and you look like a baby, and somehow, you start talking big dollars to very reputable dealers or collectors, and some of them were like, ‘How is this possible… this guy is selling drugs somewhere,’” he quips, as he recalls the early days of his ambitious venture.

However, it’s perhaps Lucas’ marketing prowess and ethos – that even the most prestigious of guitars are meant to be played on stage – that has transformed him into the go-to guy for artist guitars, with players such as Marcus King, Craig Ross, Billie Joe Armstrong, Myles Kennedy, and Yungblud all getting in on the action.

“I was very inspired by banks and huge associations buying Stradivarius [violins] very early on and lending them to musicians on tour playing classical music,” Lucas says.

“Guitars need to be shared with the world. That's my theory. That's why we lend ours on stage all the time, and that's always going to raise the value. They're really artifacts of a very specific period when the guitar revolutionized everything.”

What inspired you to start Matt’s Guitar Shop in the first place?

It’s been a little bit more than 10 years, actually. Time flies! [However], it all started when I was 15 years old.

I was not really interested in music or guitar in general. I was just playing video games with a friend of mine. His father showed up in the room and he said, “Guys, you need to listen to AC/DC.” And then I said, "Okay, [I’ll] give this guy five minutes with his old band and then I'm going to be finished with him.”

And we listened, and Angus Young was really the guy who penetrated my brain, and my passion for guitar started there. Six months later, I was seeing AC/DC in a stadium and buying an SG copy, and that started it all. And then I just wanted to buy more and more guitars because I started to discover bands.

Step by step, I went to Paris guitar stores. I was hanging out in a store called Guitar Store in Paris, and the guy was nice to me, and he let me discover the world of guitar sales – buying, selling… the daily life of a guitar shop.

I was already buying and selling privately. So it [Matt’s Guitar Shop] started in an apartment in Paris – a very small apartment. Three years, maybe four years later, we had the opportunity to get the place here, and that was it.

What were some of the initial challenges, especially as a young businessman?

They really put you in boxes initially, and that was not easy, but step by step, we met people that trusted me, and I knew who I wanted to work with over time.

I don’t come from a musical family myself. So I was mainly listening to those guys in my headphones when I was younger. I was listening to Lenny [Kravitz] and Craig [Ross] quite a lot because I have deep respect for that duo and what they represent.

One day, I show up at Rudy's Music [in New York], and Rudy just traded me one of Craig’s main touring guitars, which was his 1964 ES-345.

I didn't have the money back then, so I said, ‘Give me three months. I'm going to buy and sell in France, and I'm going to come back and pick it up.’ And my friend, who was with me at this time, told me, ‘Are you crazy? This guitar is way too much money.’

It was a time when social media was different. I just sent a message to Craig on Facebook, and two weeks passed by, and I was like, ‘Okay, this guy is busy. He's never going to reach me.’ And, suddenly, my phone is popping off, and Craig Ross just answered me, and he was so kind. [He was like,] this guy is 22 or 23 years old, he just made a huge purchase for himself, compared to his capacity.

So when I bought this guitar, we met at L'Olympia in Paris, and we got that connection going. So, for me, just meeting him was great because Craig really proves that you can’t buy class. I met Lenny later, but with Craig, it's been like 10 years and I still have that connection with him.

Which artists’ guitars command the most demand and attention?

It's quite mixed. We have John Frusciante's 1961 [ES-]335 that he played on stage. We have, of course, Paul Kossoff's 1955 “Black Beauty”, which was also used by Eric Clapton during Cream because they used to trade guitars quite a lot.

I’ve had this guitar for almost 10 years now, and I don't regret buying it. Another interesting one is Steve Lukather’s 1951 Esquire. We [also] have AC/DC's Cliff Williams’ bass – we have number three, which was toured all around the world for four years with AC/DC.

How has your vision for the showroom evolved, compared to when you first opened the doors?

When I started this business with artists’ guitars, I had two kinds of people: the people who believed in it and the people who were laughing at me.

Now, I was very proud when I was assisting at the [Jim Irsay] auction in New York City because I think that the guitar changed the world, and that the guitar will still be listened to in 1,000 years, and all those guys will be gone, and what's left is the music and their instrument. [When you buy that guitar,] you are the owner of their legacy.

So we feel kind of amazed at the shop every day because I really believed in that market when it was not fancy.

What made the Jim Irsay auction different?

Everybody was waiting for that auction. That was, after all, the greatest collection [that ever existed] of artists’ guitars.

People are starting to understand that there are good aspects to buying a guitar – whether it's for the investment or whether you're a guitar player – but if you choose wisely, those guitars will never go down [in price] because there is always somebody richer than you who wants to have that guitar.

Why have the Jim Irsay guitars leapt in value in such a short time span?

It depends on the auction house you're dealing with, the place you're buying the guitar from, and the marketing around that.

Marketing is key when you want to sell a pricey instrument like that, and I think Christie’s did a great job. They went everywhere, and when you're doing that, you just attract the best buyers because they don't have any doubt about what they're buying.

Everything went through the roof because those buyers were brought together by Christie’s in one room. They could have been telephone bidders. They could be room bidders, or internet bidders, but they were all together in one room for this collection, which was exceptional.

I see that with the shop. I don't have a single customer older than 60, and usually my customers are between 25 and 50, so it's a new generation who just discovered the world of guitars, and those people are working hard to get those guitars.

When you put them in one room, I can guarantee you that you will see new world records. If Jimmy Page's “Number One” was in that room that day, that would be between 20 and 30 million [dollars] easy.

But who are these people? What are their backgrounds?

I can give you an example of one person I know: Bobby Tseitli in Chicago. Bobby is a good friend of mine – those guys are really amazing, and they're putting together a collection called Family Guitars.

I knew they wanted [Jerry Garcia’s] “Tiger” so much. I gave him a huge hug when he bought that guitar, and I can guarantee you that this guy probably cried like a baby in his room sleeping next to the guitar that night, and that everybody in the room was feeling amazed because he was bidding with all his heart. The night after, Derek [Trucks] played it on stage. I mean, what's better than that?

I think we should be thankful for those guys who believe in the market and make it dynamic because they're not only buying guitars; they are making the shows more attractive. Everybody in the room will remember the day they saw Jerry Garcia's guitar in the hands of Derek Trucks. [In terms of the buyers’ backgrounds], I never ask too much unless they talk about themselves.

For sure, at Christie’s, we saw hedge fund guys, tech guys, cryptocurrency guys… so it's new money, in a good way, not in a bad way. From what I can tell, we have more and more young people who are just working hard, and they could be in tech, they could be in sports, whatever… we have so many kinds of buyers, and that's the beauty of this job.

Do you think we're going to see David Gilmour’s Strat one on stage anytime soon?

I know by name the guy who bought it. I don't know him personally. If he reads the interview, [I would say] I think you should put that guitar on stage. But I hope all those guitars [from that auction] are going to be on stage soon.

How do most of these clients find you?

Social media helps. You put the guitars on stage, and people are always filming. The audience recognizes the guitar, and I get texts or messages on Instagram.

So, I think it's a win-win-win because the crowd is winning because they get to see a very special guitar that day. Marketing-wise it's great for the shop, and it's also great for the artist because when this is going to the press, the tour is gonna get some marketing.

When Marcus King was touring in Paris 10 years ago, he was playing in clubs [in front of] 20 people, and we were there already, and now he's more famous, of course. And he still loves to play that Paul Kosoff guitar. Every time he’s in Paris, he plays that guitar on stage, and it's one of his favorite guitars to play.

What trends are you noticing in the types of guitars that command the highest prices in today's market?

When I started, nobody really wanted a guitar from Green Day, for example. Now, I’m getting asked more often.

I think it's a generation thing – Green Day are getting bigger because the older they get, the bigger their legacy. When the band is getting older, their fans are also getting older, and they have more capacity to buy the items of their dreams. When artists pass away, sometimes you get a bit emotional. So, of course, people are missing them so much that they want their guitars.

But I would be curious to have one of those big “dinosaur” guitars on stage [at an auction]. After the success of the Gibson Keith Richards signature, [I would be curious to have] one of Keith's guitars going on stage, the black [ES-]355, the “Micawber” Tele... or Jimmy Page's guitars or Brian May's guitar or Paul McCartney's bass – those legendary guitars that are still used by them.

I think we would be surprised by the price they fetch because records are made to be broken and are made to be set higher every time. And again, it wouldn't surprise me in the near future if we see a guitar [sell for] between $20 and $30-40 million.

Do you see any risks or misconceptions for new buyers entering the vintage guitar market, especially those treating it as an investment?

I would suggest that you check the provenance of the instruments. You have to choose wisely. If you're advised wisely and if you decide to buy the guitar at the right price, that's great.

To give you an example, when I bought Steve Jones' guitar, I knew there were rumors of Steve selling the original one 14 times to different people.

So we checked the mother-of-pearl inlays. We checked all the dings and marks. We scanned the pictures of the guitar today, and we matched those mother-of-pearl inlays. When [there are] three matches, then you know.

Beyond the monetary value, what makes a guitar collectible?

The more provenance you have and the more history you have with the guitar [the better]. For example, if Keith Richards just played one guitar one time on the sofa two minutes backstage and signed it, that doesn't really make sense to me. But what matters to me is if he played it on stage. Why did he choose that particular one for his personal collection? Was there a reason sound-wise?

I don't agree with comments on the internet that say that, ‘Oh well, David Gilmour modified the Black Strat like 700 times over time…’ [If you want a pristine guitar,] then just buy a vintage guitar. Don't even look at an artist guitar.

I understand that it doesn’t make sense for some people to buy a $15 million guitar, but I think the more modifications it has, the more personal the instrument becomes – and that’s what makes its value even higher.

There's been a lot of criticism over the amounts spent at the Jim Irsay auction. What would you say to people who feel that collectible guitar prices have lost touch with reality?

I think we are living in a world where records are made to be broken.

I would get [that comment] from the perspective of somebody earning a medium salary. That's understandable, because for some people, it's just hard to feed their children, and then you see on the news that somebody just bought David Gilmour's guitar for $15 million.

But I would say it has been like this forever, in sports, the arts… let's not even talk about the football world. I think the world is discovering guitars with these auctions, with these pieces of history, [and] with the new players as well. The rich will always be richer. We can't control that. If they want the David Gilmour Strat for $50 million one day, that's it.

What's been your proudest moment of seeing one of your guitars being played on stage?

I lent Myles Kennedy Jeff Buckley's guitar on stage in Paris a few years ago. That was the final show I assisted before Covid, but that was a moment because it was at L'Olympia [in Paris].

It was full of symbolism. We were preparing for that day for four months. Myles was the perfect guy to sing Hallelujah on stage with the very guitar that Jeff recorded the song with. I still get chills talking about it.

[Another standout moment was when] I saw Craig Ross playing [Jeff Beck’s] Yardburst in Paris.

If I told my young self, [who was] listening to Lenny Kravitz and Craig Ross, that one day I would have Jeff Beck's guitar and then Craig would play it on tour, especially in Paris, my hometown, I wouldn't believe it. It was really a full-circle moment.

• Learn more about Matt's Guitar Shop.

Over a career that spans more than 50 years, English guitarist Chris Spedding etched a reputation as a go-to session guitarist in the 1970s, and forged a career as a touring guitarist while also pursuing a solo career.

His guitar work has appeared on albums by Jack Bruce, Harry Nilsson, Paul McCartney, Bryan Ferry, David Essex and John Cale, to name but a few. He sat down with Guitar World to share some of his most memorable sessions.

Jack Bruce

He was one of those guys who was very charming; very witty, very funny – but he could turn on a dime. We all have our moments. I suppose that’s what gave rise to the reputation he had of being difficult to work with. When I was working with him, and when he was in a good mood and everything, he was fine and a lot of fun.

In England in 1969, when I did Jack’s Songs for a Tailor solo album, everybody who played guitar wanted to be Eric Clapton – except me. I had come out of the jazz thing and I was listening to Americana stuff like The Band and Bob Dylan and all that.

So I imagine Jack went for me because he knew I wouldn’t try to sound like Eric Clapton. He already had Eric; he didn’t want another guy to sound like him because he probably had enough of that style of playing.

Harry Nilsson

I knew Harry Nilsson was a big-time American artist. Along with American producer, Richard Perry, it was kind of a big-time session for me – especially when I showed up and there was Klaus Voormann on bass, Ringo Starr on drums and Peter Frampton on the other guitar!

Harry was very focused and concentrated in the studio. You hear about the lost weekend with John Lennon and lots of partying, but there was none of that going on. It was all very serious. Maybe when we had left they started having the parties!

When we were doing Jump into the Fire we did take after take after take. That was common in those days, but you don’t do it these days due to everything being digital. You’d come back the next day and there would be all these reels of 24-track tape lined up, and a huge ashtray full of dead cigarettes next to them.

You knew then they’d been there all night listening to all these takes, because you had to listen to them all. After we’d done the track, Richard said, “So it’s take number one that we’re keeping!’”

Phil Spector

I worked with Phil in the middle of the recording sessions for George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass. It was at Trident Studios in London, the same studio that I worked with Harry and Richard.

I remember a whole bunch of acoustic guitar players being there with 12- string guitars, all booked for the session along with me. Phil wanted that saturated acoustic sound that you get on My Sweet Lord, but that song wasn’t out then.

I remember Phil got us in there on Easter Sunday. And since that was a holiday, it was double-scale. It was just one piece that we had to play on. I don’t even know whether it ended up on the album! I don’t think there were any drums on it – he counted us in at the tempo and we played the part.

Brian Eno

I knew Brian. I’d been Sharks when the band opened for Roxy Music on their second UK tour. Some of the Sharks got a call to do some stuff on Brian’s album. At the time he was an unknown quantity. We didn’t know he could make his own albums; this was his first one, Here Come the Warm Jets.

I really liked the studio because it was one of those – I wouldn’t say cheap, but one of those budget demo studios with 16 tracks instead of 24, which everybody was using at that time.

John Cale

I liked John because he was one of the few people who’d take a chance. He’d change tempos, keys and the order of songs because he was interested in improvising. Some of the other members of the band were kind of freaked out by that because it’s not the rock ’n’ roll thing.

The rock ’n’ roll thing would be to keep rigidly to the song and not to experiment with it too much. But coming from a little bit of a jazz background myself, and John coming from an improvisational classical background, we both liked to mess around with things and hit people with a real curveball.

Since he stopped doing the illicit substances as we all did back then, he’s gotten to be a lot more controlled – although he’s still a bit of a rebel in some ways. It was a very valuable experience. I wish he was still like that, a bit more of a rebel, because we’d get on a lot better.

The Pretenders

That only happened once. I’d been invited on stage because The Necessaries, a New York outfit I was playing with, had opened the show. We were friends with guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, bass player Pete Farndon, and drummer Martin Chambers, and I knew Chrissie from way back in 1974 so we would hang out a lot together.

So they invited me on stage to do their encore, and I played my own part to Stop Your Sobbing, which wasn’t anything that James had played on the recording. Something different – but I only did it that once.

Paul McCartney

That was like working with no other musician ever! His status is even greater now because he has this great band and he’s still going out live and doing old Beatles songs.

When I worked with him he was still going through the phase of not wanting to do a Beatles song. It’s like Jack Bruce – when I worked with him he’d never do a Cream song. I just wanted to play Sunshine of Your Love with him, but he just didn’t want to.

So back back then we just did original stuff with Paul. He likes to control things, being who he is – but under the guise of saying, “Play as free as you like; it’ll be fine.” Then he’ll start to pick it all apart. If you’re doing well, he’ll leave it. But if you're not doing well, he’ll sort of say, “Yeah, that’s great, Chris – but what about this bit here? What about doing this?”

The moment Paul McCartney was reunited with his beloved Höfner 500/1 bass 50 years after it was stolen was captured on camera by the BBC as part of a new 90-minute documentary that charts the hunt to get it back.

McCartney’s iconic violin bass, which he bought during the Beatles’ Hamburg residency for £30, became an extension of him and is his most iconic instrument. It can be heard on early Beatles hits, including She Loves You, and survived the end of the Beatles, staying with him as he set to work with Wings.

It was during a recording session in October 1972 that it was stolen out of the back of a van, leaving recording engineer Ian Horne with the difficult task of telling McCartney that his cherished four–string was gone.

What happened to it remained unknown for another 50 years, until the Lost Bass Project was formed to hunt it down. The media attention it got led to its discovery in an English attic a year later, along with some much-needed answers.

The BBC has now turned the story into a new feature-length documentary, featuring interviews with McCartney, his close friend Klaus Voormann, and Elvis Costello, as well as roadies, journalists, and others who helped with its search.

Vitally, it captures the moment the bass returns home to Sir Paul. “50 years since you last played that,” the video is captioned.

There’s a satisfying click as the hard case is opened up, sounding like only an ancient case can, before McCartney claps joyously and shouts, “Wow! Here it is.”

The bass had received some TLC before returning to McCartney for good, with a semi-retired, UK-based craftsman, Martin Harrison, duly called upon.

“It was unplayable,” a post on McCartney’s website reads. “It was a real mess. The neck had cracked and split, it had the wrong machine heads, and the pickups didn't work. So, we set about restoring it. Working with Höfner, we had to decide whether to restore it to its brand-new condition or to its ‘used’ condition from 1972, when it was stolen.

“There’s a great photo of Paul from the 1960s, where he’s in the studio, and you can see the bass in its repaired condition with the red sunburst-style spray, and Paul said, ‘I like that. I think we should leave it as it is, and just get it working.’”

That’s exactly what they did, and there’s a real joy in McCartney’s eyes as he runs his hands up and down its fretboard for the first time in over half a century.

Harrison dropped a handwritten note into the case, too: “Many times I've had the pleasure of putting music back into old, broken instruments,” it says. “It's been an absolute joy to do that with your bass.”

The bass eventually made its grand return to the stage with a little help from Ronnie Wood and Ringo Starr, while Bass Player has met up with the man who reunited McCartney with the instrument. Now, she’s definitely not leaving home.

Much has been written about the disappearance and remarkable recovery of Paul McCartney’s storied Höfner 500/1 violin bass.

Now, Wings' former sound engineer Ian Horne has looked back on the day it first went missing, saying it “felt like the worst moment of my life.”

Beatles fans know all too well why the bass was such a treasured item. Bought for a humble £30 in Hamburg during the band's famed residency in the city, it was used to within an inch of its life, played for hundreds of gigs and on early '60s hits such as She Loves You.

It was later semi-retired to be a back-up bass, but it remained in the not-too-distant background, coming with McCartney as he formed Wings in light of the Fab Four's breakup.

It famously went missing after it was stolen out the back of a van in 1972, and its whereabouts remained a mystery until, 50 years later, the Lost Bass Project successfully tracked it down in 2024. Miraculously, it was found in an English attic.

It was a wonderful, happy ending, and the bass marked its live return alongside Ronnie Wood in late ‘24. But half a century earlier, it was a horror story for Horne. Equipment, after a tiring studio session, was stored in a three-ton truck with a roller shutter at the rear. It was there from which it was plucked.

Speaking to RadioTimes about that fateful day in October 1972, he says: “It felt like the worst moment of my life. I walked up to the truck, saw the padlock on the ground, and my heart sank.

“When I pushed the shutter up, I saw straight away that it was gone,” he continues. “The bass wasn’t there. There were lots of nice people in the hippie culture, but there were some dodgy people about as well.”

Horne says he and fellow Wings crew member Trevor Jones knocked on the doors of nearby residents “in a sort of threatening manner” as they hunted for, at best, the bass, at worst, a nugget of information. But it was to no avail.

“I realized I had to go and tell Paul in person,” Horne remembers. “I just came out with it: ‘I’ve got some bad news, Paul. Our truck was broken into, and the bass was stolen.’

“I expected him to go ballistic,” he says. “But Paul was lovely about it. He said, ‘It’s all right, I’ve got another one.’”

Not only that, but McCartney was apparently eager for the story of the instrument's theft not to leak, fearing it would damage Horne's professional reputation. It could explain why there was little fanfare about its quiet disappearance at the time.

McCartney has since met with the man who reunited him with the bass, while Höfner's own future is set for a restructure after it filed for bankruptcy in December.

A news story about a long-lost Höfner bass first appeared in the pages of Bass Guitar Magazine in December 2019, in which Höfner themselves explained: “In the spring of 1961, a young man walked into a music shop in Hamburg, Germany, and purchased his first bass guitar, a Höfner 500/1 Violin Bass.

“He would use this bass to record his band’s first two albums and several number-one hits at Abbey Road recording studios. A young man’s dream came true... He is, of course, Paul McCartney of the Beatles.

“The bass was relegated to backup duties in October 1963 and was last used by McCartney in 1969 during the Let It Be recordings. Then it vanished.

“This is the most important missing guitar in the world. It’s the bass you hear on Please Please Me, She Loves You, Twist and Shout, and many other hits. As his first bass, it has enormous sentimental value to Paul McCartney.”

A search to find the bass was led by Höfner’s then Media and Marketing Manager, Nick Wass, who launched the #tracethebass campaign to locate and return the iconic instrument. A global appeal followed in 2023, backed by former BBC journalist Scott Jones and television producer Naomi Jones.

“I thought there was maybe a 5 per cent chance that we’d find it,” says Wass. “The bass had been missing for 50 years, with no sightings and no solid leads.

“I spoke to Keith Smith, Paul McCartney’s technical manager, and he thought it had been thrown in a skip years ago. So I wasn’t hopeful, but I kept going. I thought there was always a chance.

“There were all sorts of rumors floating around the music world – someone claimed that a former roadie for the Who, now living in Massachusetts, had taken it. John McVie from Fleetwood Mac was another name that was touted as having got hold of the bass, but there was nothing credible.”

“It just went off into the universe and it left us thinking, where did it go?” says McCartney in a new BBC documentary about the instrument – McCartney: The Hunt for the Lost Bass. “But there must be an answer…”

The breakthrough finally came after a newspaper article was syndicated worldwide, leading to an unprecedented number of calls and emails with tips about the bass guitar’s possible whereabouts.

“Suddenly it was everywhere,” says Wass. “The L.A. Times, New York Times, Daily Indian Herald, – you name it. Then we heard from Ian Horne, a former roadie for Paul. He was there when the bass was stolen on 10th October 1972. That was huge – we finally knew exactly when it had been taken.

“I then remembered an earlier email from an ambulance worker called Steve Glenister, who’d heard a story about the bass ending up in a pub in Ladbroke Grove. At the time, I dismissed it – but when Ian also mentioned Ladbroke Grove and a specific street, Cambridge Gardens, the pieces started to fit.”

What happened next?

We dug deeper. My colleague Naomi checked the electoral register from 1972 and found that Steve Glenister’s parents had lived at 100 Cambridge Gardens, a big Georgian house that had been split into apartments. Hawkwind also lived there for a while, as did another band called the Pink Fairies.

I contacted Steve again and told him what we’d found. Eventually, he admitted that it was his dad who had stolen the bass and given it to the landlord of his favourite pub, the Admiral Blake in Ladbroke Grove.

Were you able to trace the landlord?

Yes. The landlord was a man called Ronald Guest. Ron had three children: Graham, Hayden, and Elaine. Graham, the oldest, was given the bass to play and used it until he went to university. The bass was then passed on to Hayden.

The family later moved to another pub in Wembley, and then to a pub in Wellingborough. At some point, the bass remained with their mum, Mary Guest, Ron’s wife. After Ron died, Hayden retrieved the bass from her.

Hayden eventually married Catherine Murphy, and they moved down to Hastings. It was Cathy who saw the news article about the missing bass. She went up into the attic and soon realized that she might just have Paul McCartney’s missing bass.

She only lived about eight miles from Paul McCartney’s house in Sussex, so she took some pictures over there. Paul wasn’t there – he was in L.A. rehearsing – but the people at the house contacted his technical manager, Keith Smith. Keith showed Paul some pictures the next morning, and he said, ‘Yeah, that’s it.’

In the end, Paul knew it was back before I did. I got a call one evening, about 8 o’clock. I was watching Netflix when the phone rang. It was Paul McCartney. That’s when I knew we’d found it.

When were you able to see the bass in person?

I drove from Bavaria to England to examine it. There was no doubt – it was the bass. But I had to produce a formal report for legal purposes.

Holding it was quite something. This was the instrument Paul had started with. After five years of searching, there it was in front of me.

What condition was it in?

Somebody had strung it right-handed and put big, thick strings on it – probably taken from a Precision bass or something. Those strings are no good for a short-scale Höfner. And, of course, the strings didn’t fit the nut either. It looked like someone had taken a hammer and chisel to widen the nut slots.

It had been strung up in the case like that for fifty years, which meant the neck had started to come out of the scarf joint. The bridge was also in awful shape and impossible to intonate.

None of the pickups worked, so we had to replace the bobbins with a vintage set. It’s all been put back together as close to the original as possible – except for the tuners, which weren’t original anyway. They had been replaced around May 1963 with a set of Waverley tuners.

Whoever had done that had bought a set of tuners intended for a six-a-side guitar, like a Fender Strat, whereas a Höfner has a two-a-side headstock. That meant two of the tuners on the Höfner were upside down.

Subsequently, I think it was on their last British tour in December ’65 or January ’66, one of those tuners broke and was replaced with one from George’s Gretsch.

So the Höfner ended up with three Waverley tuners and one from the Gretsch. They had all rusted, so we found a set of original ’61 tuners and put those on.

Has anyone put a value on the bass?

I spoke to one of the bigger papers early on, and I foolishly said, ‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe $10 million.’ Every newspaper article since has been quoting that figure, but really it’s priceless. It’s like the Mona Lisa – it’ll never be for sale.

How would you sum up McCartney’s relationship with Höfner?

I feel like he was born with a Höfner bass. He was 18 or 19 when he bought that first one in Steinways Music in Hamburg, and it just became a part of him.

I know he didn’t play it with Wings, but it wasn’t a happy time when the Beatles split. He didn’t want to be a Beatle anymore, and holding the Höfner made him a Beatle. But he picked it up again in the late ’80s, and he hasn’t put it down since.

• McCartney: The Hunt for the Lost Bass is available on BBC Two and iPlayer from April 11 and in selected cinemas on April 2 and 4.

Paul McCartney has announced his first solo album in five years, The Boys of Dungeon Lane – which was inspired by a mysterious guitar chord and a cup of tea with Andrew Watt.

Super-producer Watt, who has slowly been adding a who’s who of music royalty to his resumé, has worked with everyone from the Rolling Stones to Ozzy Osbourne over the past few years.

Now, he’s added the legendary Beatle to his list of A-list credits, and it turns out he had a formative influence on his new record's creation.

The Boys of Dungeon Lane promises to be an introspective collection of “rare and revealing memories never-before-shared” by Macca, as well as some newly inspired love songs. It will see McCartney revisit some milestone moments, charting both the story of his life and the foundation of modern popular music.

It’s been dubbed Macca’s most personal record to date – and its origins can be traced back to a mysterious guitar chord he stumbled upon while having a cup of tea with Watt.

According to a press release, The Boys of Dungeon Lane was first discussed five years ago when McCartney and Watt met for an exchange of ideas. Macca was playing the guitar at the time, and was mystified by a new chord shape.

“While playing around on the guitar during the meeting, Paul happened upon a chord that even he – the world’s most successful living songwriter – didn’t recognize,” a blurb for the record says.

“Undeterred and driven by his experimental nature, Paul carried on changing one note, then another, until he had a three-chord sequence – which Watt suggested they should record.”

From that chord came the album’s opening track, As You Lie There, which has yet to receive a release.

A lead single has been shared, though, in the form of Days We Left Behind – a floating acoustic guitar piece that opens with a delicate fingerpicking pattern that channels a Blackbird feel, before blooming into a more fleshed out piano ballad.

“This is very much a memory song for me,” McCartney says of the single. “The album title, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, comes from a lyric in this track. I was thinking just that, about the days I left behind and I do often wonder if I’m just writing about the past but then I think how can you write about anything else? It’s just a lot of memories of Liverpool.

“It involves a bit in the middle about John and Forthlin Road which is the street I used to live in. Dungeon Lane is near there. I used to live in a place called Speke which is quite working class. We didn’t have much at all but it didn’t matter because all the people were great and you didn’t notice you didn’t have much.”

The record was pieced together over a five-year period in between legs of a global tour and a packed schedule, alternating between Los Angeles and Sussex, England. The result is said to be an eclectic collection that offers everything from Wings-style rock to Beatles-style harmonies and everything in between.

The Boys of Dungeon Lane is available to pre-order now ahead of its arrival on May 29.

Last week, the Jim Irsay Collection auction set a new gold standard for high-profile guitar auctions.

David Gilmour's Black Strat went under the hammer for a record-shattering $14.6 million, with Jerry Garcia's “Tiger” guitar hot on its heels, selling for $11,560,000. These two white whales were followed by Kurt Cobain’s Smells Like Teen Spirit Mustang and Eric Clapton’s MTV Unplugged Martin, which fetched $6,907,000 and $4,101,000, respectively.

And, in a market where the prices of these mythical guitars only seem to be rising, the question on every guitar aficionado's lips is: what instruments could overtake the “Black Strat” one day?

“When a band is getting older, their fans also are getting older, [and] they have more capacity to buy the items of their dreams,” explains Matthieu Lucas, guitar market expert and owner of Paris emporium Matt's Guitar Shop – when asked this million-dollar question.

“So the price of the items is also growing. When, of course, some artists are passing away, people are missing them so much that they want their guitars. That's the only connection they can have with them anymore.

“But I would be curious to have one of those big dinosaur guitars on stage... after the success of the Gibson signature, one of Keith Richards' guitars going on stage, like the black ES-355, the “Micawber” Tele, or Jimmy Page's guitars, or Brian May's [Red Special] guitar, or Paul McCartney's [Höfner 500/1] bass.”

Lucas is, of course, referring to the legendary guitars that these rock giants are still using to this day.

“I think we would be surprised by the price they fetch, because I think records are made to be broken and are made to be set higher every time. It wouldn't surprise me in the near future if we see a guitar [sold for] between 20 and 30, 40 million [dollars]. That wouldn't surprise me at all.”

As for the one guitar Lucas speculates would have actually gone for this price last Thursday, well, there's one in particular... “If Jimmy Page's “No. 1” Les Paul was in that room that day, that would be between 20 and 30 million [dollars] easy for sure,” he asserts.

Guitar World's full interview with Matthieu Lucas from Matt's Guitar Shop will be published in the coming weeks.

The cream of the crop of Jim Irsay's collection of instruments and music memorabilia alone raked in a total of $84,091,350 from 44 lots – smashing all pre-auction estimates along the way. Guitar World’s Jackson Maxwell reported live from the auction floor, witnessing these historic sales.

The record-breaking sales of Jim Irsay’s most notorious electric guitars have understandably grabbed the headlines after last week’s auction, but there were some notable developments with regard to his bass guitars, too.

The billionaire businessman passed away aged 65 last year, leaving behind the world’s most ridiculous collection of guitars and music memorabilia, and while David Gilmour’s Strat sold for a mind-boggling $14.5 million, a number of Irsay’s most historically significant four-strings also racked up impressive sales figures during the New York auction.

Take John McVie’s custom Alembic bass, for instance. It was used to record Fleetwood Mac's timeless classic – and Formula 1 anthem – The Chain for 1977's mega-selling album, Rumours.

That prestige saw it shatter its estimated price of up to $100,000, selling for $177,800. McVie's part is widely considered one of the most iconic basslines of all time, and it's easy to see why, with the bass also taken on the preceding tour.

It features a solidbody and through-neck construction that unites laminated birds-eye maple, koa, walnut, cocobolo, and ash, a fretless fingerboard, and active electronics. It can also be heard on another Rumours cut, Gold Dust Woman, and the B-side, Silver Springs.

While the 2021 auction of one of Paul McCartney's Yamaha BB-1200 basses still holds the record for most expensive low-end weapon, the former Beatle's appeal was clear to see during last week's auction. Another of his BB-1200s, which McCartney used in the studio and on the stage between 1979 and 1984, has sold for $228,600.

It was soft-launched by Wings' disco and flamenco-flecked standalone single, Goodnight Tonight. Later, it became his principal instrument on the Back to the Egg tour. The pair of Yamahas is a rare example of instruments from McCartney's personal collection leaving his possession.

For lovers of slightly more ridiculous instruments, Dusty Hill's sheepskin-covered bass, which features a striking ZZ Top inlay and starred in the music video for Legs, fell just short of six figures.

The Explorer-style Dean sold for $95,250, having been a prominent part of ZZ Top's chart-bothering Eliminator era, which was famous for some truly bonkers instruments. Beneath the shag of its fluffy headstock, gold-plated Schaller tuners can be found. It also sports a single double-coil pickup and a black-and-gold-plated Badass tailpiece and bridge.

“One night, I received a 3 am phone call, it's Gibbons,” Dean Zelinsky recalls of the build. “He was on tour in the UK and had the guys from Def Leppard with him. He wanted to hook them up with some Dean Guitars.

“At the very end of the conversation, Billy drops the line, ‘I'm sending you some sheepskins I purchased while in Scotland, I want you to put them on some guitars.’

“I cleared a path down the center with electric horse shears to accept the pickups, tailpiece, and strings. And I remember we were still gluing the fur on the tuning keys when the FedEx driver showed up to pick up the guitars.”

Legs went on to win the inaugural MTV Video Music Award for Best Group Video.

Meanwhile, Jerry Garcia’s Tiger, which sold for $12 million at the Jim Irsay auction, has already been played on stage, thanks to its generous new owner.

If you want a lasting career as a guitar tech, you’ll have to know all the ins and outs of the rigs you’ll be working on. If you want to work for the biggest bands in the world, like The Rolling Stones, well, you pretty much have to be the best in the business.

Ryan Bullington started out as a guitar player and eventually got a job working for a sound and lighting company, through which he secured his first-ever role as a guitar tech in 1997. He worked his way up the ladder and eventually found himself taking care of Ronnie Wood’s guitars and amps.

“The band that we were providing sound and lighting for heard me play and asked if I wanted to be their tech,” he tells Guitar World, on a break from his duties looking after Brian Ray’s rig on the road with Paul McCartney.

“I said, ‘What’s that?’ and they told me I’d have to tune guitars for them. I said, ‘You want to pay me to tune your guitars?’ I didn’t know that was a thing.”

It was a life-changing moment that led to months on tour buses and hundreds of shows a year. He went from “making terrible money to good money” by building a solid reputation and moving from artist to artist. It’s a small industry, he explains, where everybody seems to know everybody.

Asked how he got The Rolling Stones gig, he says it came down to a network of likeminded friends.

“Four people put in a good word for me, including an amp repair guy in New York and a buddy who works for AC/DC. I got a call at home in Nashville at 4pm; they asked if I could be in LA the next morning. By 10am I was walking into rehearsal. It happened so fast. Now I do all the stringed instruments for Mick and Ronnie.”

What’s it like working for one of the most important rock bands of all time?

The most unique thing about the Stones gig is that all the guitars on the road are the same ones used on the albums.

We bring out a ton of guitars they used on those legendary songs. It’s great – I pick one up, strum a G chord and it sounds like Wild Horses, and that’s because it’s the actual guitar they used for Wild Horses.

What kind of pedals would we find on Ronnie’s ’board?

It’s the least I’ve ever seen on stage! There’s a Klon Centaur that’s always on, with the exception of two songs where we use an OCD for more gain. There’s a TC Electronic delay that’s used for a couple of new songs. Honestly though, it’s just a dry Fender Vibro King with that Klon Centaur. That’s it.

Well, they’ve always had a direct approach to tone without much extra color or modulation.

What I’ve learned is that, because it’s all stadiums, you get all the verb and delay you could ever ask for from the room. You don’t need a pedal. It’s wet enough. They’re playing old bluesy rock, but with quality guitars. All of them like low action and a straight neck. They want the guitar to have minimal fight.

What are the most useful tools in your trade?

The Orange Valve Tester is really useful. We’ve been using that a lot recently for all the spare amps which don’t quite get the love they deserve. With Brian Ray in the McCartney band, we have three spare Vox AC30s. It’s been great for getting everything to the same level of gain.

“We’re trying to make these amps sound the best they can, and the Valve Tester helps. I’m looking to get the same ratings across all the output tubes. I did the same with Ronnie’s Vibro Kings, getting them dialed in better. We wanted to soften up the front end and bring the gain down a bit.

How often should someone who plays two hours a day think about changing their tubes?

In my world the amps are on for six hours a day. I usually go about three months before I change them, unless we’re talking about EL84s, which run a lot hotter and need to be changed more often. But if you’re playing your amp for a couple of hours a day, it’s probably good to change your output tubes once a year.

With preamp tubes, you never change them unless there’s a problem: it might be a microphonic tube or you just might not be happy with the tone. There’s a lot you can do by swapping tubes instead of turning knobs.

What else makes your job a lot easier?

I used to joke that somebody needs to invent a string stretcher because my hands would hurt so bad. Eventually somebody made one and it became one of my favorite things – my hands no longer hurt!

My measuring tools are also important. Some people do it by eye, but I’ve worked for musicians who like things exact. Peter Frampton, for example, is very meticulous. You need to give him numbers, you can’t say ‘It’s close or about this.’ He speaks in a very clear language. Working for people like that has upped my game. Measuring takes all the guesswork and opinions out of it. You’re working with facts.

What are the most challenging onstage scenarios you’ve found yourself in?

There have been several times where the rig has gone down in the middle of a song in front of 60,000 people. You can’t panic, even if everyone else is – people might be looking at you or screaming at you. You’ve got to get in the zone while blocking everyone else out. It’s about thinking clearly.

This job can be nerve-racking, especially if you know there’s a dodgy piece of gear limping along. You’ll want to know all your weak points in the signal path – they’re the first places to start looking. Sometimes I lie in bed thinking about the signal path – if something failed, how would I fix it?

My goal is to know about the problem before the player tells me there’s one. To do that, I listen to everything on a note-by-note basis, comparing it to the last show. Context is how you know something’s off.

Have you ever had any strange setup requests?

Keith Urban once told me his amp sounded too blue. I remember thinking, “There’s no blue knob here, bro!” But usually it’s straightforward. Guitar players and guitar techs all love hearing great tones. I guess the difference is that pro players earn enough money to use gear we all wish we could own!

One of the best parts of your job must be playing rare guitars steeped in history. Which have been your favorites?

There’s a black Zemaitis that Ronnie used with The Faces – it’s the Stay With Me guitar. We have it on the road with the Stones for tracks like Monkey Man. Us backline techs will jam for an hour to let the sound crew get their stuff together, and that’s the guitar I choose. It’s in open E tuning – it always has been – so I play slide while walking the runways, checking all the monitors.

I also love Ronnie’s 1956 Les Paul Special in TV Yellow. It was given to him by Jesse Ed Davis when he was playing bass for that short while. I don’t know what Jesse used it on, but when we made the last record we had over 100 amazing guitars – all of Keith’s, Ronnie’s and Mick’s – and it’s the one I fell in love with.

To experience this stuff for yourself is something else. We often hear the phrase, “There are songs in that guitar,” and that’s true of the Les Paul Special. Songs just come out of it.

And if there’s one amp to rule them all, which would it be?

I think the greatest circuit of all-time is the tweed Twin/Bassman, which is basically the Marshall circuit. My favourite amp is Keith Urban’s Dumble Overdrive Reverb. I think it’s serial number 59, built in 1978. That amp is special.

It used to be John Mayer’s; I think it’s the one he used on Gravity, and Keith got it after. It was originally made for Jackson Browne. I was blown away when I first heard it. It makes you play more fluid and liquidy.

I’ve heard Keith play through every amp known to man and he sounded different on that one. I love the Dumble circuit. Not everybody is a fan, but I am because I know what it’s capable of.

You’ve seen a lot of pedals over the years. Any favorites?

It’s hard to say – there are so many out there. You can get the job done with just about any pedal. I did a Peter Frampton tour in 2013 called the Guitar Circus because every city had a big-name player come sit in with us. I think there were 26 guests in total, and over half of them had a Klon Centaur on the pedalboard. So, shoutout to the Klon, I guess!

I met a guy while we were doing the Stones record and he had this pedal out called the Love Bomb. It’s even bigger than a Big Muff, but it sounds awesome. It has a little tube inside. I have one with me right now. It’s a fantastic pedal, man!

Performing alongside Paul McCartney must feel nothing short of surreal for those who've been lucky enough to experience it. Johnny Marr knows that feeling first-hand – and he recently recalled what he learned from his “mind-blowing” jamming sessions with Macca.

“If you take a band like the Beatles – they always come to mind because they’re the yardstick everyone thinks about,” he says on The Overlap podcast.

“Ringo is so important to the sound. If it was anyone else it would be a completely different band. But, pretty lowkey, George Harrison – speaking as a guitar player – [he was] one of the greatest guitar players ever.

“Paul McCartney, on the other hand – and speaking as a musician – I had a mind-blowing experience playing with Paul McCartney when I was younger.”

Marr goes on to say Macca is equivalent to having “two guys” in a band, “Because he’s so melodic, he’s so attitude-y, and just [has] amazing musicality.”

The guitarist notes that, perhaps nowadays, McCartney's legendary status beyond the musical sphere makes it easy to forget his bass chops.

“You forget, actually, about what their craft is,” he asserts. “And Paul McCartney reinvented a way of playing the bass. You think of him as a songwriter and a singer really, but as a bass guitar player, it’s next-level, really.

“I think that was really deliberate. I think he took great pride in being... he wanted to be the best bass player in the world.”

The Beatles as a whole revolutionized music, but as Marr notes, Macca's bass chops were equally evolutionary, helping to transform the traditionally 'background' instrument into a melodic force that could carry hit after hit.

Post-Smiths, Marr developed a reputation as a gun for hire, which included a brief period during which he jammed with the Beatles bassist.

“I didn’t do a recording session with him as such, but we did get together for a good long eight-or-nine-hour day, and just played and played and played very intensely, really loudly,” he told The Autojubilator in a 2013 interview.

“Which was pretty great, obviously. I remember everything about it. We played I Saw Her Standing There, Twenty Flight Rock, Tutti Frutti. I got him to play Things We Said Today, and I think we played some Wings stuff. C-Moon, I remember. That was fun. He and I were singing harmonies on I Saw Her Standing There – that was a pretty good moment, too. I was only 23, maybe 24.”

Marr recently launched his latest signature Jaguar with Fender, and shared what he hopes this new version communicates to the next generation of guitarists.

Höfner, the German instrument brand best known for the Violin Bass synonymous with Paul McCartney, has clarified its position after reports emerged that the company had submitted preliminary insolvency proceedings, as per court documents.

“Dear musicians, Höfner fans & friends, some of you may have already heard: our company has been going through a difficult period – especially since the introduction of the US tariffs – and filed for insolvency on Thursday, 11 December 2025,” reads the social media statement.

“We would like to clarify a few things: We are not discontinuing production, distribution or our media channels. In Germany, there is a three-month period before the actual insolvency procedure is opened. This period offers the opportunity to consolidate the company and restructure it for a better future.”

The statement continues, “Within this period, we will continue to build and sell our instruments and the Höfner team is doing its best to provide you with the support, service and warranties you expect.

“We would like to express our appreciation to all of you who continue to support us even in these difficult.”

Höfner was founded in 1887 by Karl Höfner. Over the years, the brand’s factory and reputation expanded, and eventually gained worldwide recognition after McCartney adopted the Höfner 500/1 semi-hollow electric bass.

This isn’t the first time the company has experienced a restructure. In 1994, Höfner became part of the Boosey & Hawkes Group. In 2003, Boosey & Hawkes then sold its musical instrument division to the Music Group.

Höfner was part of this conglomerate until December 2004, after which it was sold to Klaus Schöller, who had been the general manager for years, and Ulrike Schrimpff, the company’s finance director.

On December 16, No Treble reported that, as per documents retrieved from the Fürth District Court in Bavaria, “preliminary insolvency proceedings will be ordered on December 10, 2025, at 5:05pm” to safeguard the debtor’s assets from “adverse changes."

Following the news, McCartney himself took to social media to pay tribute to the company he's championed over the decades.

Paul McCartney has expressed his dismay at the financial troubles that are rocking Höfner. The future of the German company is under threat, after it was revealed that it had filed for preliminary insolvency proceedings at the Fürth Local Court, in Germany.

McCartney has been playing Höfners since since 1961. He picked up a 500/1 violin-style bass guitar for around 50 bucks when the Beatles were workshopping their sound night after night in Hamburg.

It was on a Höfner that McCartney made his name – on The Ed Sullivan Show, on tracks such as She Loves You, I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Love Me Do.

“It is very sad to see Höfner go out of business. They have been making instruments for over 100 years, and I bought my first Höfner bass in the sixties,” writes McCartney on Instagram.

“I have loved it ever since. It’s a wonderful instrument to play: lightweight, and it encourages me to play quite freely. It also offers pleasing variations in tone that I enjoy. So, commiserations to everyone at Höfner, and thank you for all your help over the years.”

Talk of Höfner going out of business might yet be premature. These are bleak times for the fortunes of the company, no question. But these preliminary insolvency proceedings do not necessarily mean the company will go to the wall.

As yet, Höfner has made no statement clarifying its position, but under preliminary insolvency proceedings the company is free to continue operations under the court’s supervision.

The filing states that “preliminary insolvency proceedings will be ordered on December 10, 2025, at 5:05pm” to safeguard the debtor’s assets from “adverse changes”.

There are not many more details, although No Treble reports that a former Höfner employee has said the company’s financial woes are longstanding.

Höfner makes a range of stringed instruments. There are cellos, ukuleles, violins, violas, classical guitars, acoustic and electric guitars in its lineup, along with a range of accessories and spares.

But when you designed the bass guitar that one of the Fab Four used, that’s what people will know you for – that’s how you will be remembered.

It works both ways. McCartney will always be remembered as the moptop with the Violin Bass – which was why, when he formed Wings in 1971, he decided to use a Rickenbacker.

Speaking to Bass Player in 2021, he said it new band, new look. So why not switch things up.

“Maybe it was a combination of things,” said McCartney. “I knew I was known for the violin shape. It’s like Charlie Chaplin, you know? The little walking cane, the moustache, and a bowler hat, and he’s Charlie. If he comes on with a bandanna and he’s shaved and he’s on a bike, it’s like, ‘Who’s that?’ So I think there may have been an element of that was what I looked like, kind of a trademark.”

Guitar World has approached Höfner for comment

Höfner, the German instrument maker whose iconic Violin Bass was famously played by Paul McCartney, has reportedly filed for bankruptcy.

The news comes from No Treble, which cites court documents from the Fürth District Court in Bavaria in its report. The filing states that “preliminary insolvency proceedings will be ordered on December 10, 2025, at 5:05pm” to safeguard the debtor’s assets from “adverse changes”.

No Treble also reports that, according to a longtime former employee, the company has been facing financial issues for some time. One Dr. Hubert Ampferl has been appointed as an insolvency administrator, tasked with tackling the debts by finding investors.

Höfner previously experienced a restructure back in 1994, when it became part of the Boosey & Hawkes Group. It was also sold to Music Group in 2003, and a year later to Klaus Schöller.

The company itself was established in 1887 by Karl Höfner, and celebrated its 135th anniversary in 2022. Originally a violin maker by trade, it began manufacturing its first guitars during the 1930s, and developed the Violin Bass – the model with which it’s most synonymous – in the ’50s.

In 1961, a Höfner 500/1 Violin Bass was purchased by Paul McCartney, who famously used the instrument as his number one bass all the way throughout his career, including with the Beatles and in his later work. McCartney became synonymous with the Violin Bass (he had four in his collection) and cemented its place as a stalwart in British rock music.

That particular Violin Bass mysteriously disappeared and went missing for over 50 years. In 2023, it was found and reunited with McCartney thanks to the efforts of the Lost Bass Project.

Miraculously, five decades after it had been stolen from the back of a van in October 1972, it turned up in the home of an individual living on the south coast of England. Almost a year ago to this day, McCartney played the long-lost bass on stage for the first time since it went missing. A documentary is currently in the works.

Höfner has been contacted for comment.

Picture “The Beatles” in your mind – what do you see? There's the logo, four mop-top lads in suits, screaming girls mobbing airport runways... and Paul McCartney plucking away at his Hofner violin bass guitar.

Obviously, though, generational talent that he is, McCartney is and always has been a mean guitarist as well. Even before the world's most famous rock group went their separate ways, McCartney had already put to vinyl an enviable catalog of six-string greatness.

As a matter of fact, McCartney was originally supposed to not only be a guitarist in the Fab Four, he was supposed to be the lead guitarist.

In the following exclusive extract from the updated The Beatles Anthology book, McCartney shares the story of how a single onstage clam-up in the band's early days paved the way for a young George Harrison to claim the lead guitar role, which he would occupy for the rest of the band's music-reshaping existence…

PAUL McCARTNEY: A great thing about Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow and the provinces, is that they all have places with famous names, and the first gig with The Quarry Men was on Broadway – in Liverpool. (We made our first record in a little demo studio in Kensington, Liverpool.)

For my first gig, I was given a guitar solo on Guitar Boogie. I could play it easily in rehearsal so they elected that I should do it as my solo. Things were going fine, but when the moment came in the performance I got sticky fingers; I thought, ‘What am I doing here?’ I was just too frightened; it was too big a moment with everyone looking at the guitar player. I couldn’t do it. (I never played a solo again until a few years ago.) That’s why George was brought in.

I knew George from the bus. Before I went to live in Allerton, I lived in Speke. We lived on an estate which they used to call the Trading Estate. (I understand now that they were trying to move industry there to provide jobs, but then we didn’t ever consider why it was called a trading estate.)

George was a bus stop away. I would get on the bus for school and he would get on the stop after. So, being close to each other in age, we talked – although I tended to talk down to him, because he was a year younger.

(I know now that that was a failing I had all the way through the Beatle years. If you’ve known a guy when he’s 13 and you’re 14, it’s hard to think of him as grown-up. I still think of George as a young kid. I still think of Ringo as a very old person because he is two years older. He was the grown-up in the group: when he came to us he had a beard, he had a car and he had a suit. What more proof do you need of grown-upmanship?)

I told John and the other Quarry Men about this guy at school called George: ‘He is a real good guitar player, so if you’re thinking of guitar – this is your boy.’ They said, ‘OK, let’s hear him, then.’

George could play Raunchy so well it really sounded like the record. We were all on the top of an empty bus one night and I said, ‘Go on, George.’ He got his guitar out and sure enough he could play it, and everyone agreed, ‘You’re in. You’ve done it.’

It was rather like me knowing the words to Twenty Flight Rock. With George it was: ‘He’s a bit young, but by God he can play Raunchy well.’ George was like our professional guitarist from then. Later, John did play some Chuck Berry-style solos, but he gave over the solo chair to George and became known as rhythm guitarist.

• This excerpt is taken from The Beatles Anthology 25th Anniversary Edition, published by Chronicle Books.

Paul McCartney is set to be played by another Paul in the upcoming Beatles four-part biopic, directed by Sam Mendes – and it's none other than the very-in-demand Paul Mescal, who recently starred in Gladiator II and Hamnet.

Yet, much like how Timothée Chalamet and Monica Barbaro had to hone their guitar skills to play Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, respectively, Mescal has confirmed that he's well on his way to learning some Lennon–McCartney–penned classics on guitar. Not only that, he once got to jam with McCartney in preparation for the role.

“I think he has fundamentally and forever changed the world,” Mescal tells Rolling Stone, referring to Macca. “I will never forget it as long as I live. I got to play Blackbird with him.

“That's the coolest thing that my job has ever afforded me. I was kind of having an out-of-body experience. I was in drama school nine years ago and [now] I'm sat opposite Paul McCartney, and we're playing Blackbird.

“To be sat in front of somebody playing one of the most famous, most covered songs of all time, but then to be sat in front of the person who... that came out of his mind. I was like, ‘I love my job.’

“I've been learning left-handed so it's been pretty intense,” Mescal confirms. “It was just a very special, special thing.”

Alongside Mescal, the other actors playing the Fab Four are Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr, Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, and Joseph Quinn as George Harrison, with four separate-yet-interconnected movies slated to represent the Beatles' story from each member's perspective.

In more recent McCartney news, the story of his stolen Höfner 500/1 bass guitar, which went missing for 50 years, is set to be told in an all-new feature-length documentary.

The story of Paul McCartney’s stolen Höfner 500/1 bass guitar is to be told in an all-new feature length documentary.

With a working title of The Beatle and the Bass, the film unpacks the mystery of what happened to Macca’s bass after it was stolen out of a van in London in 1972.

It had remained missing and of sight for 50 years until Höfner launched a global appeal in 2023, putting the investigative journalists Scott and Naomi Jones on the tail of the four-string. The Lost Bass Project was born. And the Lost Bass Project delivered the goods; they found it.

The bass turned up in an attic in Suffolk, England, in late 2023. A few months later the bass was back in McCartney’s hands, and made its return to the stage at the final show in his Got Back 2024 Tour, when he performed Get Back with Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood accompanying him on a Gibson Les Paul Custom.

In a quote from the documentary, McCartney explains why all this matters. This is a story of cosmic justice, musical history, and reconnecting with the instrument that helped him and the Fab Four make their name

“I think anything that’s nicked, you want back, especially if it has sentimental value,” says McCartney. “It just went off into the universe and it left us thinking, where did it go? There must be an answer…”

McCartney was just a teenager when he bought the Höfner in 1961. The Beatles were in Hamburg, and when he saw it, he knew it was the one. It felt right. McCartney has long credited it with shaping how he played the bass.

“The Höfner is so light, it encouraged me to play with a light touch and be more adventurous with it,” he told Bass Player in 2005. “I’d play it more like a guitar, whereas my big, heavy Wal five-string led me to play more solid, deep bass. So looking back, the Höfner was a key to my style.”

You can hear what he means on the Beatles’ Lovely Rita, from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, where his wayfaring bassline takes up the octave, adding musical information and melody as it goes, before coming back down to take care of the low end.

“It’s just something I love to do and recognize as a sort of signature of mine,” he said. “The slides and slurs are from playing guitar and using some of that approach on my Höfner.”

The Beatle and the Bass is being produced Passion Pictures, the same production team behind the award-winning Christopher Reeve documentary, Super/Man, and was commissioned by BBC Arts.

Ceire Clark, VP of non-scripted acquisitions at Fremantle, who’s distributing the film, says the film will take us on a “global journey” and explain why McCartney's Höfner 500/1 is considered to be “the most important bass guitar in history”. It is a must-watch for Beatlemanics; Macca plays a starring role.

“The documentary offers a fresh perspective on music history, with access to McCartney himself and those who witnessed The Beatles’ rise from the very beginning,” says Clark. “At Fremantle, we’re proud to be part of a project that celebrates the enduring power of music and storytelling to connect people around the world.”

Of course, we know how the story is going to end. What we don’t know is exactly where this bass has been all this time. It is said to have had a number of owners after a thief snatched it in Notting Hill. It was reportedly sold to a pub landlord for a paltry sum – “not much money plus a few free pints” – and somehow ended up in the possession of Cathy Guest, an English mother of two whose late husband had inherited it from his brother.

McCartney was so happy to be reunited with it that he reportedly gave Guest a six-figure reward. We’d have been happy with a few pints with Macca. For the record, some estimate its value to be in excess of $12.5m.

Over the course of his career, session heavyweight Robbie McIntosh has played with some true electric guitar greats, from Paul McCartney and Mark Knopfler all the way to Eric Bibb and John Mayer.

Having also played with a diverse range of artists such as the Pretenders, Boyzone and Norah Jones, it’s fair to say McIntosh has developed something of an elite ear when it comes to musical appreciation and comprehension.

There was one time, however, when he got two guitar heroes mixed up, and mistook one of his former employer’s playing for that of another six-string legend.

Reflecting on his prolific career in a new interview with Andertons, McIntosh looked back on his time in John Mayer’s band, during which he contributed to the PRS Silver Sky creator’s acclaimed Where The Light is Live album.

“Steve Jordan and Pino [Palladino] had done Continuum and John was looking for another guitar player,” McIntosh says of how the collaboration came about. “Pino and Steve suggested me, I think just because I can learn things pretty well.”

Not long after, McIntosh – who was in the process of internalising Mayer’s back catalog ahead of the job – received a call from the singer-guitarist himself, and ended up indirectly paying him a compliment when he mistook his playing for Eric Clapton.

“John is an unbelievable guitar player, but playing some of the parts was quite easy – I certainly can't play his lead stuff,” McIntosh continues. “Then John actually phoned me up, and I kind of put my foot in it, because I thought Eric Clapton was playing the lead guitar on, I think it was Stop This Train.

“I said, ‘Oh, when did you get Eric to play on that?’ He said, ‘Eric's not playing on it. That's me.’ Just on that track, it sounded more like Eric Clapton than John Mayer. He laughed, and he said, ‘Oh, thanks, man.’”

Stop This Train is an acoustic cut with no lead lines per se, so it’s likely that McIntosh – who attempts to demonstrate about a second of the song he has in mind as he tries to remember it – has misidentified it.

Whatever the case, Slowhand’s subtle influence can certainly be heard elsewhere throughout the Continuum track list.

It’s understandable that Mayer would thank McIntosh for the mix-up, owing to the fact he considers Clapton to be one of his biggest influences. Heck, even in the album liner credits for Continuum, Mayer reportedly wrote, “Eric Clapton knows I steal from him and is still cool with it.”

The fact the song McIntosh mistook for Clapton’s playing is on that very album is telling.

Likewise, Clapton has gone on record to show his appreciation for Mayer in the past, once calling him a “master guitarist” after the pair worked together on Clapton’s 2014 record, The Breeze: An Appreciation of JJ Cale.

McIntosh recently sat down with Guitar World to look back on his career, and reflected on his approach to playing alongside John Mayer.

The reunion of Nigel Tufnel, David St. Hubbins, and Derek Smalls as their fictional heavy metal band Spinal Tap for Spinal Tap II: The End Continues – after a total of 41 years – is no mean feat.

And while the news of the beloved band’s return to the silver screen has set the internet abuzz, the trailer also revealed that the rock (and comedy) spectacle will also include some of the genre's heavy hitters: namely, Paul McCartney and Elton John.

“When I first met Sting, he told me that he watched it all the time on the bus and tour bus, and a lot of bands do that,” director Rob Reiner tells Rolling Stone's Brian Hiatt, when reflecting on the decades-long legacy of the first movie.

“And he said, ‘I've seen it over and over again – every time I watch it, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I thought it was a perfect description for people who are in that world.’”

As for how he managed to convince McCartney to join the circus, it seems like there wasn't much coaxing involved.

“I reached out to Paul McCartney, I reached out to Elton John, and they immediately said, ‘Yes.’ It wasn't like they hesitated,” he reveals. “And even Garth Brooks, who I ran into at one of these conferences. He said, ‘What are you doing these days?’

“And I said, ‘Well, we're talking about possibly doing a sequel, 41 years later.’ And he said, ‘Oh, really, God, I'd love to do something in that.’ And I thought, ‘Wow, there's a guy, you know, he's a country star, but he had seen it many times.’”

Hiatt is quick to point out that McCartney and John's roles are far from just 30-second cameos. In fact, they have extended scenes – with Reiner teasing that one scene was inspired by a real-life encounter with the Beatles bassist.

“The interesting thing about the Paul scene is that it's based on something that actually happened,” he hints.

“There's a rehearsal complex in the Valley where there's a bunch of rehearsal halls and stages for bands to get ready for their shows, and Spinal Tap was getting ready for one of its shows. Paul McCartney was in another room rehearsing, and he happened to walk in one day when Spinal Tap was rehearsing, and he says, ‘Play us a song, fellas.’ And I think they did Start Me Up.”

As for what guitar aficionados can expect from the Spinal Tap sequel, it's safe to say that it's shaping up to be a total guitar extravaganza, with axes ranging from St. Vincent’s Music Man to Joe Satriani’s Ibanez JS-3 featured in the trailer.

The Beatles’ I Want to Hold Your Hand was released in the United Kingdom in November 1963. That same week, Laurence Juber started playing guitar. A little divine providence might be in evidence, given that he’d later join Paul McCartney in post-Beatles band Wings.

But as Juber points out, he’d been trying to get a guitar for some time. “My dad wanted me to play saxophone because he was a big band fan. I signed up for clarinet in school – but I put my name at the bottom of the list to make sure they ran out of instruments before they got to me!

“I’d been following the Beatles since the summer, when She Loves You came out. When they did the Royal Command performance that seemed to give the guitar a certain gravitas. It was no longer a hooligan instrument. So I got a guitar as a birthday present; I never put it down.”

By the mid ’70s Juber had become one of London’s top session guitarists, and he’d have happily continued had McCartney not intervened in 1978, inviting him to join Wings. “Even though I’d spent the last decade working my way up in the studio circles, this was Paul McCartney,” he says. “There's no comparison. I couldn't turn it down.”

Along with fellow newbie, drummer Steve Holley, he joined Paul and Linda McCartney and Denny Laine to record Back to the Egg. He took part in what would be the band’s final tour cross the UK in 1979. Wings disbanded in 1981 and he moved to New York City before settling in Los Angeles.

There he resumed his career as a session guitarist for Belinda Carlisle, Eric Carmen, Al Stewart and many others, while also working on TV and movie music. Starting with 1982’s Standard Time, he’s released a steady stream of acclaimed solo albums, many of which showcase his mastery of fingerstyle acoustic playing.

He’s recorded five Beatles and Wings collections over the years; and now there’s a sixth, A Day in My Life, on which he reimagines a dozen Fab Four classics on solo acoustic. “It’s almost like you’re working with puzzle pieces, but there’s no limit to how you can arrange them,” he says. “It’s a matter of finding the nexus of the guitar side, the musical side and the fan side.”

The album was tracked in a single day, on one Martin guitar, at Abbey Road’s hallowed Studio Two, where the Beatles created much of their catalog. It’s also where Juber received the Wings call. “Beyond the emotional attachment, there’s such mojo to the place,” he says.

“It’s got a sound and vibe like no other room. And you can’t beat the microphones. I was looking at a pair of Neumann KM54s that were used on Beatles records, and I played into them. Pretty incredible.”

You’ve distinguished yourself as a great acoustic fingerstyle player, but originally, you wanted to be a blues rock lead guitar player.

“And specifically a studio musician. That became my ambition at the age of 13; I needed to establish myself as a versatile guitarist. I took some classical guitar lessons in high school and studied music at university.

“I was equally enamored of Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, but also folk baroque players John Renbourn and Bert Jansch, as well as guitarists like Stefan Grossman and John Fahey. I practiced Bach lute suites and Clapton’s parts on Hideaway from the Beano album. Whatever I could get from slowing down records and figuring them out.

“When I took ear training exams in college, I always managed to scrape through, but in reality I had bandstand ears. I didn't have perfect-pitch ears that the keyboard players had, but I got by.”

How did you go about breaking into the London session scene?

“I understood that one way in was through the National Youth Jazz Orchestra. I played with the orchestra all through college; I made it my business to become indispensable. We did a BBC TV concert, and the next day I got a call from a contractor to do some studio work in London.”

Was it a very competitive scene?

“I was really in kind of the post-scene. By the time I got in around 1974-75, I was working with musicians who’d been on records since the mid ’60s. Conversely, when I got into studio work in L.A. in the ’80s, it was very different from the older scene with the Wrecking Crew.

“A lot of producers in my time in London were working with classic singers. The first album I played on was for the jazz singer Cleo Laine, with George Martin. He was the first record producer I worked for – it was all downhill from there!”

Did George Martin have anything to do with you getting in Wings?

“Not at all. I was in the house band on a TV show with David Essex, a big pop star at the time. Denny Laine was a guest on the show; he liked my playing and recommended me to Paul and Linda – but it didn’t happen overnight.

“About six months later I was doing a session in Abbey Road when I got a call inviting me to jam with Denny. ‘Oh, by the way, Paul and Linda will be there!’ I went into the audition not really knowing any Wings tunes, but we played some Chuck Berry and some reggae grooves, then Paul said, ‘What are you doing for the next few years?’ Wings wasn’t just a gig; it was an education.

“I learned how to make records from the production side. I learned what it meant to be an artist. All the things you had to do as a studio musician were vastly different from being the artist cutting the records. Instead of doing three tunes in one three-hour session, we'd spend a day on one tune – sometimes longer.

“I spent a lot of time working with Paul on Back to the Egg, but also with the co-producer, Chris Thomas, who’s one of those unsung heroes of the British rock record-production scene.”

How much space did he give you to be your own man on the guitar?

“A fair amount; very rarely did he tell me what to play. When we were doing the solo on Spin It On – kind of a punk rockabilly thing – I sat in the control room next to Paul, eyeball to eyeball, and him bringing stuff out of me that I didn't know I could do. That was like, ‘Okay, this is where the transcendence happens; where you can create something new.’

“It was an important part of the experience to get into that artistic space, having the time to really tweak guitar sounds and parts. It’s what you do when you’re in a band versus being a studio musician. Paul was very insistent that we thought of ourselves as a band. It’s where that extra space to be creative came from.”

When you’re in a band with Paul McCartney, how do you not pepper him with Beatles questions all day long?

“Once in a while Paul would say, ‘Well, in my old band…’ I think that’s how it works with any artist of stature – you don’t want to be too pushy about stuff like that. Although when I worked with George Harrison on the soundtrack to Shanghai Surprise, he was very happy to talk about Beatles stuff.

“He felt like he was kind of an observer of it himself, because Paul and John were the upfront guys, and he was a step behind. And yet George became one of the most successful songwriters in the band. The only Beatles song in the Spotify Billion Stream Club is Here Comes the Sun.”

Back to the Egg featured Rockestra Theme – it must have been a heady session with all those guitar greats in one room.

“Pete Townshend, David Gilmour, Denny Laine, Hank Marvin and myself; Jimmy Page’s amp was there, but he never showed up. We had three drummers – John Bonham, Kenney Jones and Steve Holley – Steve being the Wings drummer at the time. There were three bass players.

“It was a remarkable session, and we won the first Rock Instrumental Grammy. They never told us we’d won it until this little box arrived in the mail. The Grammy ceremony was not long after the Japan thing [when McCartney was arrested for carrying drugs], so everybody was a bit distracted and forgot to tell us we’d won a Grammy. Another important lesson I learned from Paul is to never smuggle cannabis into Japan!”

How did Paul tell you he was disbanding Wings?

“I went with Paul and Linda to France in July 1980 to work with Ringo on his Stop and Smell the Roses album. We’d been rehearsing the material for the Tug of War album; George Martin came in and said, ‘This doesn’t need to be a Wings album. Let’s make this a Paul McCartney album.’

“Even then, it wasn’t the entire end of the band – we were still in the studio in January of ’81. But I’d seen the writing on the wall, and I was making plans to move to New York. In the history of Wings, no incarnation of the band had lasted more than three years. I didn’t expect it was going to go on forever.”

After some time in New York you moved to Los Angeles. Was the West Coast studio scene different from what you experienced in London?

“Not radically – but the cartage was better in LA! You’d take as many guitars as you thought you might need to a session. We all had refrigerator-size racks and multiple amps; it was the way of the world at that point. In the course of time it's condensed back down. Now I’ll go to a session with a pedalboard, three or four guitars and a small amp, pretty much like I did back in the ’70s.”

Which model of Martin guitar did you used on A Day in My Life?

“It’s a 000 body size but with a long scale length – 25.4 inches, which is a little less than a Taylor but more than a Gibson. It has a Cuban mahogany body which didn't come from Cuba; I think it’s from a storm-felled tree in Florida.

“It’s a species of mahogany that has more dimension to it than Honduras mahogany to my ears. It almost has some of the gravitas of Brazilian rosewood, but there’s still the warmth of mahogany.

“And it has a moon spruce top and a titanium truss rod. It’s a very comfortable and useful guitar. I’m didn’t turne to 440; I tuned to 432 – I do periodically depending on the circumstances. There’s some thought that it’s more natural. We’re getting into kind of voodoo stuff! Hendrix didn’t tune to 440 either.”

Why did you change the key of Blackbird from the original?

“Paul does it in G – he got the idea from Bach’s Bourrée in E minor, which he and George Harrison had learned. It turns out that Chet Atkins had recorded it and George heard it. I think it’s pretty clear that it’s Bach-Beatles via Atkins.

“Paul plays it as an accompaniment. He’s still singing the song in G in standard tuning. I couldn’t find a satisfying way of incorporating the melody, whereas doing it in DGAD, I could hint at the harmonic motion but still ground it in the melody and move everything around.”

You recently played one of Harry Styles’ hit singles, Treat People with Kindness, co-written by your daughter, Ilsey. It helps to have friends in high places, huh?

“It does! She’s a successful songwriter. I very rarely play on anything she’s written, but I got a phone call one lunchtime saying, ‘What are you doing this afternoon, Dad? We can use you in the studio.’ So I trotted off, armed with a Stratocaster and a little Fender amp.

“As it turns out Harry Styles is a Wings fan. In fact, I found that a lot of artists of his generation are specifically fans of Back to the Egg. It’s a shame Paul is not so much a fan of it. I think he’s kind of neglected the late Wings era. But the fans love it, and those tunes are fun to play.

“The session for Harry was a lot of fun – especially the fact that it became a hit record. It was the first Number 1 album I played on in about 25 years!”

• A Day In My Life is on sale now.

In 1989, Robbie McIntosh formally joined Paul McCartney’s live band, having worked on a number of sessions for the Beatle’s solo record, Flowers in the Dirt.

Though that first session would have been memorable by the very nature of the fact McIntosh was playing with one of the Fab Four, it was made even more special when McCartney ended up giving him a guitar lesson.

And it wasn’t any old guitar lesson, either: Macca showed McIntosh how to play his iconic Blackbird acoustic guitar riff properly, after the former Pretenders guitarist spent years navigating the fretboard-twister incorrectly.

As McIntosh recalls in a new interview with dopeYEAH, “The first session I did, he [McCartney] knew I was a fan. I remember talking about Blackbird, because I learned to play it when I was probably 12 and taught myself to play it.

“There’s one bit where it climbs up [the neck] and I used to play it with a bit of a stretch. I could play it, and it sounded fine, but he went, ‘Oh, no, I play it like this.’ I thought, ‘Of course that’s an easier way to play it.’”

Using a Brian May BMG Red Special, McIntosh demonstrates the difference between how he used to play Blackbird, and how McCartney taught him. For the short chromatic run that moves up from C to E, McIntosh used to stretch across with his pinky finger to fret the melody notes exclusively on the B string.

McCartney, on the other hand, told him he was making it needlessly difficult for himself. Rather, the Beatle revealed he could simply incorporate the high E string, too, and remove the need for unnecessary reaches.

As McIntosh himself explains, it was a far more intuitive way to tackle the song, and it’s the way that most players who have ever searched up the Blackbird tab online will no doubt be familiar with.

Still, it was valuable insight for a self-taught Blackbird fan, and something that would end up coming full circle a few years later.

McIntosh adds, “When we did the Unplugged record for MTV, he did Blackbird but he got me to play it with him. That was fantastic. He could have played it on his own but it was one of the first things we ever talked about when I worked with him. He said, ‘Let’s play it together.’”

Speaking of his time in McCartney’s band last year, McIntosh discussed his favorite songs he’d played with Guitar World, saying, “The Abbey Road medley was fantastic. And we did Sgt. Pepper. I’d grown up with The Beatles so I was familiar with their stuff. We did a lot of stuff from Flowers in the Dirt and Band on the Run. I’d suggest things like Fixing a Hole, and we did Let Me Roll It and All My Loving.”

The first person I interviewed for Guitarist was indeed The Shadows’ legendary lead guitarist. It was before I joined the mag and was working for Fender in London. Hank had come down to try out some Strats, and the year was 1985.

The Shads were rehearsing at Nomis Studios, the brilliant but ultimately doomed brainchild of Simon Napier-Bell. It was a luxurious rehearsal complex around the corner from Olympia, and all the big bands rehearsed there.

I recall interviewing John Page of Fender’s Custom Shop there some years later, and we could hear Queen hits blasting out from an adjoining room. When the music stopped, bassist Pino Palladino emerged.

Pino said he was standing in for John Deacon while the band rehearsed for the Freddie Mercury tribute concert on 20 April 1992. I never quite fathomed that one out, but I’m sure it’s as I remember it (although I admit things become hazy over time).

Just after I joined Guitarist, Fender opened an Artist Centre in Nomis so visiting players could try out and even borrow gear for their rehearsals. John Hill from Fender asked if I’d come down to check over the guitars and tweak any that required a setup.

He then invited me to attend its opening day (when Jeff Beck roared up in a 1930s hot-rod Ford in Sea Foam Green with a matching Strat on the back seat).

That was also where Mitch Mitchell brought Jimi’s white Woodstock Strat for me to set up, prior to him selling it, and where I got to meet María Elena Holly, wife and guardian of the estate of the legendary Buddy. María Elena was there to cut the imaginary ribbon, pronouncing the centre’s opening.

One evening, John Hill was showing me around the operation’s many facilities, and again music was leaking through the door of the largest rehearsal space. This time it was Beatles songs. “McCartney’s rehearsing guitarists for his next tour,” John told me.

For a second I thought I might knock on the door and ask if I could have a go. I would nab a guitar and amp from our room and, just as in a Hollywood movie when the star falls ill and the understudy takes over, I would win miraculous acclaim and monumental success. Naturally, I abstained from causing myself almost certain humiliation.

Big Eyed Beans From Nomis 

Anyway, back to Hank. I had no typewriter and would not have known one end of a word processor or computer from another. So, after conducting our interview over a lunch of beans on toast in Nomis’s excellent canteen (where I’d queued behind Ade Edmondson, Nigel Planer and Rik Mayall of the spoof heavy metal band Bad News), I laboriously wrote out our chat in longhand. My girlfriend typed it up and I duly submitted it.

It was a real shame when Nomis closed as it represented a remarkable moment for music. Anyone who was anyone rehearsed there. But Napier-Bell says he had put himself in hock to the tune of £2 million just before Britain’s economy tanked and interest rates rocketed.

“At one time or other just about every top music artist in Britain was in that building,” he recalled in 2018. “Songs were written, hits made, groups formed, managers fired, and bootlegs recorded. Drugs must have been ingested in ruinous quantities. And I should think a fair bit of sex went on, too. But mostly, bands just rehearsed.”

That included me, as I was also hired to play alongside a raggle-taggle bunch (including Argent bassist Jim Rodford) for one of McCartney’s celebratory Buddy Holly ‘lunches’. So although I bottled crashing the Macca rehearsal, I did finally get to play for the man (well, kind of). Did you ever visit Nomis? If so, please send in your stories to the usual address!

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Since 2002, Brian Ray has held down the enviable gig as guitarist and bassist in Paul McCartney’s band. At the same time, he’s built a successful side career as a solo artist – sometimes with his garage rock band, the Bayonets – and has released a series of punchy power pop albums and singles that recall the ebullient, hard-driving and hook-laden sounds that dominated the Southern California scene in the late Seventies.

“I’m a West Coast guy, so that stuff is in my roots,” he says. “The Plimsouls, Dwight Twilley, the Knack – they were awesome. Of course, power pop can be traced earlier to the Raspberries and the Sweet, and then that got adopted by Cheap Trick. Even Tom Petty was power pop at times. I have my rootsy side, but I also have my pop side. In my music, they sort of dance together.”

Ray’s latest album, My Town, is something of a “best of” collection in that it includes his singles from the past decade, but it also features four new cuts that he recorded with his McCartney bandmate Abe Laboriel Jr. on drums, as well as bassists Scott Shriner (from Weezer) and Davey Farranger (from Elvis Costello’s the Imposters).

The record’s lead single, Bad 4 U, which Ray co-wrote with his label head, Steven Van Zandt, is an irresistible nugget of ear candy that boasts hooks at every turn and packs a knockout guitar solo. When the Earth Was Round and Hold Me Close are raucous, ridiculously catchy rockers, while the coral sitar-flavored All the While dips into Sixties psychedelia and features Ray channeling Jimi Hendrix on a cosmic guitar lead.

“That song is a bit of a left turn for me,” Ray says. “I was talking to Dennis Mortensen, who works with Steven Van Zandt, and he said, ‘Why don’t you do a long-form jam that doesn’t have any adherence to a singles format? It could be seven minutes long – just have a blast.’ That’s what I did. I used a 1955 Les Paul Special and put it through a Marshall, but what sounds like a whammy bar is a [Gamechanger Audio] Bigsby Pedal. It’s absolute wizardry.”

Ray feels right at home on Van Zandt’s Wicked Cool Records, which he says, “is geared toward garage rock, but that encompasses so much. And the great thing about working with Steven is he’s like the old-school A&R guys in that he really gets involved with his artists.

“We talk all the time, and I’ll play him songs. He always has ideas, so we bounce things off each other. Of course, it’s great when he plays my songs on his Underground Garage station on Sirius. He’ll pick a track and put it on his Coolest Songs in the World channel. He’s a big believer in what he plays and gets involved in, and I’m very happy to work with him.”

Let’s go back to your early years. I understand your first pro gig was touring with Bobby “Boris” Pickett of Monster Mash fame.

“That’s right. Bryan Englund, the drummer of my high school band, was the son of the great actress Cloris Leachman, and back then she was dating Bobby Pickett. One day, Bobby heard us rehearsing in Bryan’s garage, and he asked us if we’d do some gigs with him. We were, like, 17, so this sounded amazing ≠ we were going to be the Crypt-Kicker 5. We played Six Flags in Texas, a gig in Missouri and a few other places. It was great; we did our own sort of zombie makeup, and my late sister came out with us and sang.”

Beyond Monster Mash, what was the rest of the set like?

“It was a seasonal novelty 40-minute set based on The Twist and Monster Mash and Me and My Mummy. He did a lot of cover songs. He had an assistant who played Renfield [Count Dracula’s fanatically devoted servant]. He’d come out and throw chicken wings at the kids. It was a lot of fun.”

I’m sure. Soon after, you joined Etta James’ band. Quite a big switch from Monster Mash!

“Yeah. [Laughs] That came about from a charity gig I did with Bobby Pickett. At the show, I met Phil Kaufman – he was a producer and tour manager – and he took a liking to me. He told me that he was working with Etta James, and he asked me to come to a rehearsal because he heard the guitar player couldn’t make it. It was wild – there was Etta James and all these killer players. I was shy and kind of sat there, but Etta said to Phil, ‘I like that little white kid.’ She asked me if I’d like to play the next night in Long Beach.”

Which was the start of a 14-year stretch with Etta James.

“That’s right. I was so young. I had just turned 18.”

Did her material offer you a lot of opportunities to shine as a guitarist?

“Oh, absolutely. Etta loved guitar, and in concert she did a lot of bumping rhythm and blues. It got very blues rock. I had lots of space to open up. She wanted me to rip. When I would play a solo, she’d keep yelling at me, ‘Play! Play!’ On songs like Running and Hiding Blues and Baby What You Want Me to Do, she encouraged me to play solo after solo. She was tough and hard, but she could be warm and fun. I had a great experience with her, and eventually I became her musical director.”

In 2002, you joined Paul McCartney’s band. How did that come about?

“It was kind of crazy. I had done an album with Shakira and was asked to go on tour with her. I told her people what I needed for a salary, which they agreed to, but then I said I required Business Class travel because there would be a lot of long flights. This became a problem, and they got somebody else. I was kind of kicking myself over that because I would have had years of work.

“A little later, my friend Abe Laboriel Jr. came to my birthday party. We had worked together in France doing Johnny Hallyday and Mylene Farmer, but now Abe was playing with Paul McCartney. I asked him if they were playing any shows, and he said they were thinking of doing a song at the Super Bowl before the National Anthem.”

“So I asked, ‘Who’s going to play guitar when Paul plays bass, and who’s going to play bass when Paul plays guitar?” Abe said, ‘Actually, we’re looking for a guitar player who plays a little bass.”

“I said, ‘I’d love a shot at that.’ Abe put my name forward, and sure enough I got a call from David Kahne, who had produced a lot of Paul’s stuff. I went to meet David and hung out with him. I played some guitar and bass, and he said, ‘I’ve got a good feeling about this. I’ll put your name forward.’

“But David also said, ‘I have to be honest: There’s four other guys that are in the running. I don’t really have control over it, but I wish you good luck.’ I thought, ‘Okay, that’s about as good as it gets.’ I thanked him and split, and the next day I got a call: ‘Can you be on a plane tomorrow to go to New Orleans to play one song with Paul McCartney?’”

So you didn’t have to actually audition with Paul?

“Playing Freedom at the Super Bowl was my audition.”

No pressure at all.

“[Laughs] No, none! Later that night, everybody went back to the hotel bar. Paul was telling stories for a couple of hours, but after a while he said, ‘Thank you, guys. It’s time for bed.’ He hugged a bunch of people and started out, but before he left he came up to me and said, ‘Goodnight, Brian. Welcome aboard. Stick with Rusty – he’ll show you the ropes.’”

Rusty being Rusty Anderson, who already played guitar in the band.

“That’s right.”

You were a guitar player primarily, so I imagine you had to woodshed on bass once you were in the band.

“Absolutely. I raced home and prepared for five weeks straight so I could be ready for the first band rehearsal. Truth is, I never concentrated on bass-playing. I played bass on my own demos and other people’s demos, so getting ready to play in Paul’s band was challenging.

“Thankfully, Paul’s basslines, while they’re iconic and memorable and musical, they’re not really technically challenging. They’re just so good. Because they’re so listenable, they’re easy to understand. Let’s face it – they’re in our bloodstreams. Even if you’re not a bass player, you know these parts. They’re in your head.”

Is there any process for how you and Rusty work our guitar solos?

“Rusty plays the lion’s share of the solos. He was the first guitar player hired, so that’s how that went. As time has gone on, Paul has asked me to do more and more solos.

“We just naturally fall into who plays what, though sometimes we talk about it: ‘Why don’t you play the lower part here?’ or ‘You want to play the higher part?’ At the end of the show, we do the guitar shoot-out on The End, with Paul, Rusty and me doing solos. I come in last, so I do the John Lennon parts.”

You guys extend those solos live.

“It just keeps going around and around as long as Paul feels like it. Sometimes it’s short, sometimes it’s long. For the first sequence, we start off kind of note-for-note, and then we do whatever we want.”

Let’s go back to your album. I’m curious about your songwriting influences. Who would you say had a big impact on you?

“Oh, wow, good question. I’d never thought about that, actually. I mean, obviously Lennon and McCartney. And then there’s Ray Davies. Those are the main influences. [Laughs] These are such Boomer answers. I also like John Hiatt and, of course, Dylan, not that my songwriting is anywhere near what they do. There’s a British singer-songwriter named James Hunter who’s fantastic. He does sort of retro R&B, rock and soul. His lyrics are as tight as those great Leiber and Stoller songs.”

Are you generally a fast writer, or do you labor over songs?

“I’m pretty fast. Sometimes it starts with a guitar lick, but it could be a vocal melody or lyric idea. I try to figure out what the song is about, and then I’m good. In the case of Bad 4 U, it’s basically autobiographical. I was a blond, smiley kid from Glendale, California, but I wanted to be Robert De Niro because I thought that’s what the girls liked.”

Break down the collaboration between you and Steven Van Zandt on that song.

“Steven really nailed down the lyrical aspect without making the protagonist come off as weak. He wanted the kid, who is me, to keep his strength. Now, I thought I had the music all done, but Steven said, ‘This lyric, you’ve got to move it into the chorus. We have to hear the chorus in a big way, because it’s everything.’

“I didn’t want to do it at first because I thought I was finished, but then I was like, ‘Goddammit, he’s right. That’s a better idea.’ He was great about hooks moving into hooks. He understands that so well.”

You mentioned your Les Paul Special. What other guitars did you use on the new tracks?

“On Bad 4 U, the main guitar in the intro is my 1965 Epiphone Casino. It’s got a Silver Fox finish, which makes it pretty rare. I think only one or two of them were ever made like that. What else did I use? Les Pauls and SGs. I like vintage stuff; it just sounds better. On some things I played a Hofner bass – don’t tell Paul. [Laughs] Sometimes I used Fender basses and a Vox Phantom IV bass.”

You mentioned how you lost that Shakira tour over your desire to fly business class. I assume much of your travel with Paul is by way of private jets.

“Paul is very generous, and he takes really good care of us. He takes us on little excursions between dates when we’re out in the middle of nowhere. He’ll find some cool resort to take us to, which is lovely. It’s a combination of every kind of travel you can imagine.”

No complaints there, huh?

“Oh, no. None at all.”

• My Town is out now via Wicked Cool.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Session bassist Will Lee has been singing even longer than he has been playing bass guitar. Still, the 1998 formation of the New York City Beatles cover band the Fab Faux presented Lee with a new challenge: singing and playing Paul McCartney's brilliant melodies and basslines live.

“Generally, when it comes to singing and playing bass, my first thought is always, ‘Can we overdub?!’” Lee tells Bass Player. “I have difficulty putting 100 per cent into both at the same time. I'll often find my singing momentarily distracted by a groove or my bass playing briefly lapsing during an expressive vocal passage.

“But what gives me an advantage with the Fab Faux is the music is so deeply ingrained. Plus, I spend a lot of time working out the songs and the moves.”

“With McCartney there are two periods: The early albums, where the band would recreate what they did live – and the post-'65 overdub era, where they would save Paul a track and his bass would be one of the last things to go on a song.

“What makes some songs like Day Tripper, Nowhere Man, Getting Better, and Oh! Darling tricky are the continual bassline variations. Virtually every time Paul gets to the chorus sections he plays them differently.”

The foundation of Oh! Darling is Paul McCartney's loping, heavily ornamented bassline, modeled after Fats Domino's left-hand piano on Blueberry Hill.

According to Mark Lewisohn's The Beatles Recording Sessions, McCartney laid down a guide vocal when the basic rhythm tracks were cut on April 20,1969.

Though McCartney didn't achieve a satisfactory lead vocal overdub until three months later, there are audible clues on the final mix that he was singing while he recorded his bass track. Notice the missed downbeat and a mid-measure clam in bar 13 (D# instead of D over Bm) and the late entrance at 01:29.

In addition, the bass and vocal are cleverly integrated. When the vocal gets busy, the playing gets sparse and vice versa.

McCartney establishes the song's lazy, 12/8-shuffle feel in bar 1. In the first four bars he plays each chord's root on beat one, a motif into beat three, and fills on beat four. His subtle yet effective phrasing include slides and hammer-ons that originate from various intervals below their targets.

McCartney's approach differs substantially in the second verse. He nails a root-5 power chord on the downbeat, plays the next bar's motif above the F# root, and fills with eighth-notes throughout.

The bridge begins with McCartney pumping the IV's root (D) into a chromatic climb and subsequent drop to F, one of the song's two non-diatonic chords. Next, it's back to A for a slow walk and descending hammer-laden fill at 01:23.

The vocal rhythms also get busier. The first trouble spot occurs at the end of bar 18 at 01:16. The vocal begins after beat four on the 16th-note upbeat immediately following the second eighth-note. This means you're singing between played notes. Isolate this beat and drill it using bar 19's downbeat as a target. When this vocal passage recurs at 01:29, the bassline precedes it.

In the third verse, McCartney plays beat-four approach fills throughout: low grace-hammers at 01:49, a half-step hammer-on and chromatic descent at 01:53, and Hendrix-y phrasing at 01:57.

That's some heavy analysis for a doo-wop tune. But before you cry “overkill,” consider this: singing and playing at the same time requires developing a whole new set of chops. Some claim it's a matter of independence, but it makes sense to view singing and playing as a process of integration.

“The key to playing and singing is preparation and focus,” says Lee. “Learn and practice each part separately until they become second nature, and then combine them slowly. Then when you get everything up to speed and you're performing, relax, have fun, and stay focused on both parts.”

• Abbey Road is out now via Capitol.
• The Fab Faux play three dates this summer. See The Fab Faux for dates and ticket details.

Multi-award-winning photographer Kane Hibberd will bring his intimate exploration of artists and their instruments of choice to London next week. Featuring over 100 life-size images of guitars steeped in history and import, his collection of photos, designed to feel like the subject is in the room with the viewer, will be displayed at Unlocked in Shoreditch.

All images are 1:1 scale, meaning shots of everything from Paul McCartney’s iconic Höfner bass to Dave Grohl’s Gibson Trini Lopez, Joan Jett’s embattled Melody Maker and Keith Urban’s Fender Broadcaster are all displayed in life size format, presenting them in exacting, like-for-like detail.

Hibberd wants attendees to witness the chips, dents and scratches on these guitars in painstaking detail – to get up close and personal with an instrument they’d otherwise never have the chance to see and inspect like this.

The Scale Exhibition also explores the stories behind the instruments, such as Nile Rogers’ time-beat Fender Stratocaster. He had accidentally left it on a New York Subway once with the guitarist “lost in the moment after a difficult phone call,” resulting in a race against the clock to get it back.

A psychedelic Rickenbacker that has forged a reputation as big the man who plays it, Tame Impala's trippy multi-instrumentalist Kevin Parker, and one of Ed Sheeran's acoustic guitars also feature.

Beyond that, you can see Jack White’s madcap and crazily customized Fender Triplecaster Tele, plus axes belonging to thrash metal god Kirk Hammett, and indie maestro Johnny Marr.

“It feels like a lot of photography is now created and consumed within a short amount of time,” says Hibberd. “I wanted to work on something that took years, rather than days or weeks, and keep it all offline.

“The people I’ve met, the stories I’ve heard, and the places I’ve wound up in have been an absolute odyssey and I’m so glad to be finally sharing it .”

Ready to reveal itself unto the world after 12 years of working away in secret, the Scale exhibition runs at Unlocked in Shoreditch from 12 June - 31 August.

Head to Scale Exhibition for more.

Three-quarters of the way through Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is one of Paul McCartney's most underrated gems, Lovely Rita. On a record with so many high-points, what makes this tune stand out?

The bassline has a lot to do with it – it’s boldly up-front in the mix, and the bouncy feel and linear melodicism, accented by a few unconventional, ear-catching licks, make it the perfect foil to the playful lyric. In particular, McCartney steers the mood of the tune with his use of both staccato and legato feels, octaves and upper-register passages.

“It’s just something I love to do and recognize as a sort of signature of mine,” McCartney told Bass Player in 2005.

“I’ll always go up the octave and just slur into high notes for a few little runs, and then come back down and nail the bass part. I always try it, though sometimes it’s not appropriate.

“The slides and slurs are from playing guitar and using some of that approach on my Höfner. Because it is so light, it encouraged me to play with a light touch and be more adventurous with it. I’d play it more like a guitar, whereas my big, heavy Wal 5-string led me to play more solid, deep bass. So looking back, the Höfner was a key to my style.”

After a four-bar guitar intro, McCartney dives right into Lovely Rita with a sliding lick based on the triads of the chords, immediately establishing the bassline as a key element. One reason this works so well is the simplicity of the other tracks: the guitar and piano are just banging out the chords, and Ringo's drums plod steadily along.

Once the main lyric enters, McCartney shifts to simpler eighth-notes, finally settling into a walking line that continues through most of the rest of the song. Notice how he moves from one chord to the next in a scalar fashion at 00:25; this gives the bass a seamless, flowing quality, one of the positive characteristics of a traditional walking bassline.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Lovely Rita is the way McCartney moves between staccato and legato feels. While most walking lines are legato, this one begins decidedly staccato – bringing to mind the sound of swing-era basslines, when bass players used gut strings and no amplification.

One listen to the album's previous track, the soft-shoe When I’m Sixty-Four, confirms McCartney's penchant for old-fashioned musical styles.

Bars 13 (00:33) and 16 (00:42) sound significantly different, even though the notes are identical. Had McCartney played the whole song staccato, by this point it might have begun to grow tiresome.

Similar variations occur in the second verse, but they come much more quickly; by slipping back and forth between long and short notes, McCartney keeps the song sounding remarkably fresh.

Lovely Rita climaxes halfway through the last chorus, starting at 02:00. After a neat crescendo that ends on a staccato eighth-note, McCartney reprises the opening lick as the vocal rises to an exciting new level, providing a satisfying sense of return and closure.

There's a critical difference between the end and the beginning, though: the notes on the ‘and’ of beats one and three are now staccato, making the lick even more bouncy than before.

The tune ends with an odd breakdown section, roughly over an A chord, in which McCartney plays a weird, offbeat, minor-key ostinato in 16th-notes. And the last note is most unusual – there aren't a lot of songs where the bass ends up on the 4th of the last chord!

For more on Macca’s relationship with the violin bass, check out our history of Paul McCartney and the Höfner 500/1 bass guitar.

Brian Ray has spent the last two decades as Paul McCartney’s right-hand man, dividing his duties between guitar and bass depending on what the Beatle plays for each song. However, to land the gig back in 2002, he had to go through a rather public audition in front of millions of spectators.

Irish stadium rockers U2 were booked for the Super Bowl XXXVI halftime show at the 73,000-capacity Louisiana Superdome, but McCartney – who would take the spot in Florida three years later – was tasked with the pregame festivities. It was Ray’s first show with the band and one hell of a trial by fire.

“It was kind of crazy,” Ray says in the new issue of Guitar World. “I had done an album with Shakira [2001’s Laundry Service] and was asked to go on tour with her. I told her people what I needed for a salary, which they agreed to, but then I said I required Business Class travel because there would be a lot of long flights.

“This became a problem, and they got somebody else. I was kind of kicking myself over that because I would have had years of work.”

Fortunately, greener pastures were up ahead. He continues, “A little later, my friend Abe Laboriel Jr. came to my birthday party. We had worked together in France doing Johnny Hallyday and Mylene Farmer, but now Abe was playing with Paul McCartney.

“I asked him if they were playing any shows, and he said they were thinking of doing a song at the Super Bowl before the National Anthem. So I asked, 'Who's going to play guitar when Paul plays bass, and who's going to play bass when Paul plays guitar?' Abe said, ‘Actually, we're looking for a guitar player who plays a little bass.’

“I said, ‘I'd love a shot at that.’ Abe put my name forward, and sure enough I got a call from David Kahne, who had produced a lot of Paul's stuff. I went to meet David and hung out with him. I played some guitar and bass, and he said, ‘I've got a good feeling about this. I'll put your name forward.’”

The caveat, however, was that getting the gig was not a surefire thing. Kahne told him there were four other guys in the running, and that the final decision was ultimately out of his hands.

“I thanked him and split,” Ray remembers. “The next day I got a call: ‘Can you be on a plane tomorrow to go to New Orleans to play one song with Paul McCartney?’”

With that call, his luck – and indeed his life – changed. “Playing Freedom at the Super Bowl was my audition,” he adds. No pressure at all.

The fact that, over two decades later, Ray is now part of the furniture in McCartney’s band says everything about how his very public audition went. What happened next showed the softer, more paternal side of the Liverpudlian legend.

“Later that night, everybody went back to the hotel bar. Paul was telling stories for a couple of hours,” Ray recalls. “But after a while he said, ‘Thank you, guys. It's time for bed.’ He hugged a bunch of people and started out, but before he left he came up to me and said, ‘Goodnight, Brian. Welcome aboard. Stick with Rusty [Anderson, guitarist] – he'll show you the ropes.’”

Ray says he “raced home and prepared for five weeks straight” ahead of the upcoming tour. But it wasn’t his guitar playing he was concerned about. For the first time in his life, what he could do on a bass felt paramount.

“I [only] played bass on demos, so getting ready to play in Paul's band was challenging. Thankfully, Paul's basslines, while they're iconic and memorable and musical, they're not really technically challenging. They're just so good. Because they're so listenable, they're easy to understand. Let's face it – they're in our bloodstreams. Even if you're not a bass player, you know these parts. They're in your head.”

Brian Ray’s full interview features in the new issue of Guitar World. The magazine, which features Angus Young on the cover, also celebrates 45 years of Back In Black, and much more. Head to Magazines Direct to pick up a copy.

The name Hans Zimmer immediately evokes tales of grandeur encapsulated in film scores. From The Lion King to Interstellar and, most recently, the Dune series, Zimmer is one of the best-known – and well-respected – contemporary composers.

However, in a recent Rick Beato interview, the movie soundtrack extraordinaire has proved that he's just like the rest of us – he also struggles with what often feels like an insurmountable challenge: stage fright. But he manages to (pun very much intended) get by with a little help from his friends.

“Just before I did the very first show, I had a phone call from Paul McCartney, and he wanted me to come in and work with him,” he tells Beato.

“And I said, ‘I want to go and do this show, go and play with my band, but I have really bad stage fright. So you might be just saving me here by offering me a project I can't say no to.’ He said, ‘Oh, stage fright. I had terrible stage fright.’”

Macca went on to reveal that after not playing a show for three years, he did a performance in Paris where he experienced massive performance anxiety – and only got through it thanks to his audience.

“I don't know which song it was but he was playing the bridge when he was supposed to play the second verse,” Zimmer continues.

“But he knew that his band was going to be knowing that he was making a mistake and they were going to go to the bridge when it was supposed to be the bridge, as opposed to going to the chorus. But no, they went to the chorus.

“So he just went, ‘Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.’ And the audience went wild, and they just loved it. And afterwards, [English singer and television presenter who was also friends with the Beatles] Cilla Black said to him, ‘Paul, that was amazing. Do you do that every night?’”

So, what was McCartney's nugget of wisdom on stage fright? “He really sort of helped me by going, ‘They're on your side. Just talk to them, show your vulnerability. Show who you are.’ And I think that was the best advice I got, and that wasn't a bad chap to get good advice from, right?”

In recent Hans Zimmer news, the composer also recalled showing Jeff Beck a thing or two on guitar when the two linked up to work together in the ’90s.

Andrew Watt has built quite a name for himself as the go-to producer for rock veterans, working with the likes of The Rolling Stones, Ozzy Osbourne, Iggy Pop, and Pearl Jam.

Fresh from a Grammy win for the Stones' latter-day album Hackney Diamonds and Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars' Die With A Smile, coupled with an Oscar nomination for an Elton John and Brandi Carlile track, Watt has discussed another notable individual on his ever-growing list of collaborators – and it happens to be a Beatle.

“His manager, this guy named Scott Rodger, who's a great guy, I told him, ‘I would love to get with Paul [McCartney] some time,’” Watt tells Howard Stern.

“And then right after that, I won the producer for the year at the Grammys. And then I think he told Paul about that, and then Paul was like, ‘OK, I'd love to meet this guy.’ So I just got a text: ‘Paul wants to come over for tea to your house.’

“So I'm like, Paul McCartney is coming out, so I cannot sleep the night before and I'm literally starting to doze off, and I sit up in the middle of the night [and] I'm like, ‘Holy shit, I have no lefty guitars. I have only right-handed guitars.’ I'm a lefty, but I play right.

“We're supposed to have tea, but what happens if he wants to play a chord, or wants to show me something? I could have Paul McCartney playing guitar in front of me and I won't be able to. So we start Googling and we find a company that will rent them, so they're in the house.”

Watt explains how he was psyching himself out before Macca finally made an appearance – and how he managed to discover some invaluable information about a timeless recording session straight from the source.

“We started talking about Blackbird, because that is one of my favorite songs ever, and it's very interesting to play. It's got a very particular right hand. So I was asking him if I got it right. And he was showing me stuff."

Blackbird, which McCartney plays on the White Album with his Martin D-28, has become a rite of passage for fingerpicking guitarists. However, according to the songwriter (and the original guitarist) himself, most people are missing a key element that contributes to the song’s timeless magic.

“‘[McCartney said,] ‘You know, the most important part of that song is that tap your foot while you play it.’ And I'm like, ‘I thought that's a metronome.’ ‘We didn't have metronomes. That's my foot tapping,’” Watt relays to a surprised Stern.

“So they actually had his foot mic’d in the studio. So getting those little bits of information from the source – that's the reason why I exist. It gives me life.”

Last year, Watt revealed how he convinced McCartney to guest on a Rolling Stones track for latest album Hackney Diamonds.

More than 60 one-of-a-kind items, including guitars signed by Paul McCartney, Slash, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Sheryl Crow, and Olivia Rodrigo, will be auctioned on February 2 via Julien's Auctions, with all proceeds benefiting the leading music industry charity MusiCares.

“Year after year, our partnership with Julien's Auctions helps MusiCares provide vital support to the music community. The generosity of artists and fans fuels our mission to care for those who make music possible,” comments Laura Segura, Executive Director of MusiCares.

Amongst the memorabilia, highlights include a 2023 Martin DX-2E X Series Special acoustic signed by a host of music stars, including McCartney, Crow, the Eagles, Jon Bon Jovi, and Brandi Carlile, estimated to sell for between $3,000 and $5,000, and a 2024 Fender American Vintage II 1951 Telecaster in butterscotch finish, donated and autographed by Bruce Springsteen, with bids already exceeding its $4,000 estimate.

Other noteworthy guitars include a 1995 Gibson Les Paul Studio in Wine Red finish signed by Neil Young (estimated at $2,000-$4,000), a 2024 Gibson Slash Les Paul Standard in November Burst finish autographed by Slash ($2,000-$4,000), and a 2009 Squier Avril Lavigne Telecaster signed by Olivia Rodrigo ($1,000-$2,000).

The auction will take place live at The Recording Academy in Santa Monica, California, and online through Julien's official website. For more information about this auction, visit Julien's.

In addition to its ongoing work providing critical health and welfare services to the music community, MusiCares has also launched a new initiative to provide immediate assistance to musicians and music industry professionals affected by the Los Angeles wildfires.

Paul McCartney brought his Got Back tour to a star-studded close in London last night (December 19) by performing Beatles classics with Ringo Starr and Ronnie Wood.

The career-spanning setlist included several Beatles, Wings, and solo hits, but it was the surprise appearances of Macca’s fellow rock ’n’ roll heavyweights – and the high-profile return of a legendary bass guitar – that have understandably stolen the show.

A tireless 36-song performance got out of the traps quickly with A Hard Day’s Night, with a feast of some of McCartney’s finest slices of songwriting, including Blackbird, Let Me Roll It – which was bestowed with a little of Jimi Hendrix's Foxy Lady for its final throes – and, of course, his villain-slaying epic, Live and Let Die, following suit.

McCartney had the backing of a children's choir for a timely run-through of Wonderful Christmastime before bringing out Rolling Stones’ Ronnie Wood, with whom he dished out the shuffling grooves of Get Back – a rendition made extra special thanks to Macca’s instrument of choice.

Over 50 years ago, McCartney’s Höfner violin bass was stolen while the Beatles were recording in 1972. The instrument had previously been used on a slew of Beatles songs, including Love Me Do and She Loves You, and is one of the band’s most recognizable instruments.

Miraculously, a project spearheaded by the Lost Bass Project – which had a little help from a Guitar World scribe – helped locate the bass earlier this year, and reunite the Höfner with its rightful owner.

McCartney was said to have been as “excited as a schoolboy” upon its discovery and return, and his promise that it would be fixed up and return to the stage has come true. On the night in question, Macca told the crowd: “We've been looking for it for 50 years, and I got it back. Here to make its first stage appearance in 50 years is my original bass.”

This year has been a wild one for Beatles guitars. John Lennon’s long-lost Framus 12-string acoustic was found in an attic, and George Harrison’s oddball Futurama guitar – used extensively during the band's Hamburg days – sold for $1.27m at auction.

Elsewhere, John Lennon’s first-ever Vox amp was found under strange circumstances, with Guitar World breaking the story in October.

Perhaps then, with all that nostalgia in the air, it prompted the multi-instrumentalist to invite his former Beatles bandmate Ringo Starr onto the stage during the tour’s mega finale.

“I've had a great night tonight!” Ringo quipped to the crowd, before retreating behind his drum kit.

Of course, they chose two unstoppable Beatles jams for the occasion, strutting through a roof-raising Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band – aided by some smooth licks from Rusty Anderson – and the proto-metal pomp of Helter Skelter.

It was the perfect conclusion to a mammoth 59-date run of shows that officially began back in 2022.

“It’s fantastic, playing with my old mate, but there comes a time when we’ve got to go home,” Starr says as he departs the stage. As for McCartney, fears that this could be his final tour seem to have been extinguished as he bids the crowd adieu with a simple but telling line: “All that remains to be said is – see you next time!”

Last month, McCartney joined Jack White and St. Vincent for an electric rendition of The Beatles’ The End during a record-breaking set at Mexico’s Corona Capital Festival.

“When you have a new guitar in your hands, it makes you feel good. When you’re playing and messing around with sounds that are inspiring, that’s when the ideas come.”

That’s Chris Shiflett – veteran Foo Fighter, thriving solo artist and Shred With Shifty podcast host – waxing lyrical about his all-new, American-made Fender signature model.

It’s a rollout he’s been teasing since early spring, when prototype versions started appearing on his social media and onstage with him at Foos shows in the US. Now, road tested to perfection and ready to hit guitar stores, meet the Fender Chris Shiflett Cleaver Telecaster Deluxe.

Available in Dakota Red or Charcoal Frost, it comes loaded with two Custom Chris Shiflett Cleaver Noiseless CS-90 pickups and features a resonant alder body with a comfortable belly cut. It boasts a large, ‘70s Strat-style headstock, a speedy 25.5” scale maple neck with a 12” radius rosewood fingerboard and 21 medium jumbo frets.

It promises gutsy stadium-sized tones as well as the twangy cleans that you’re much more likely to find in Shiflett’s countrified solo sets.

It’s not his first rodeo with Fender signatures – in 2012 he teamed up with the company to launch a wallet-friendly Mexican Tele Deluxe, before going full bells and whistles on a more exclusive Masterbuilt variant in 2019.

Dubbed “The Cleaver” for its ability to slash through the mix – thanks to a pair of high-end Fralin P-90s – the Masterbuilt has been one of his main weapons of choice ever since. But he admits it was “crazy expensive” to make, and not suited to any kind of mainstream rollout.

Thus, the new Cleaver Deluxe was conceived to bridge the gap between the two previous models in terms of spec and price point.

Before we get onto the new Cleaver Deluxe, what do Telecasters mean to you, and what are your most enduring associations with them?

“Going way back, Keith Richards is probably the first person I associated with the Telecaster. Then Joe Strummer, of course, is a huge one. Then you get into all the country pickers. The Telecaster is so closely associated with country music – it's the gold standard of honky-tonk guitar playing.

“I think of it as the perfect workhorse guitar. You can’t really break them. You can drop them or kick them and they just keep coming back for more!”

What sets this signature model apart?

“The pickups. The original production model had humbuckers. This one has Fender pickups that are modeled after the Lindy Fralin noiseless P-90s I have in the Masterbuilt one.

“When I got the first prototype from Fender, I A/B’d it with my Masterbuilt and – to my ears – it sounded literally the same. I think they got that right on the very first pass.”

What other design elements were you most specific about wanting to include?

“I’m always excited by new colors. This comes in Dakota Red, like the Masterbuilt, but we’ve also got it in Charcoal Frost, which is super cool. I love that we painted the headstock. As an aesthetic detail that just appeals to me.

“All the details are spot on. The tint on the neck, the rosewood fretboard, the 500k pots. Those little details make a big difference to me going out on stage and playing all the time. This thing’s great out of the box and there’s no tweaking necessary.”

How did the guitar got its name?

“I think it was my old guitar tech, Sean Cox, or maybe our sound guy. I don’t remember who came up with it, but we called the original one ‘The Cleaver’ because it cut through!

In Foo Fighters we have a lot of sound coming off the stage and as one of the guitar players in the band it’s something I’m always thinking about. Where should my tone sit? The P-90s just have that growl.”

You’ve been using Superstrats onstage as well lately, which feel like the antithesis of the Cleaver Deluxe – or any Telecaster for that matter. So where does the love of shred guitars come from?

“You’re totally right! I’ve gotten a few of those over the years. When I grew up it was the era of Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhoads, Yngwie Malmsteen and all those full-ripping guitar heroes. But I could never play like that! By the time I was playing in high school bands I’d moved into a different space musically.

“There was a time you wouldn’t have touched a Superstrat, at least in my world – that was very illegal. It’s cool to be able to let go of those old feelings and those silly rules we put on ourselves when we’re young.

“The nice folks at Fender have given me one of those yellow and black Eddie Van Halen Strats. I’ve got a Charvel. I’ve got a regular Strat with a humbucker and a Floyd Rose in it. I’ll go to those occasionally for certain things.”

What other gear is most essential to you right now?

“For my solo stuff I’ve been using a Quad Cortex. For my podcast, I use the Tone Master Pro that Fender put out. It sounds amazing and it’s super intuitive. I like it a lot and I like messing with all that stuff.

“In Foo Fighters I have my real amps, but I also have the luxury of a giant road crew that sets all that stuff up for me. When it’s me on my own on a van tour, I’ll just take the Quad Cortex because it’s so much easier.

“They’re all just tools to get the job done. I think people get really worked up about new technologies, when it’s all just about whatever sounds good in the room.?

Has the experience of interviewing guitar superstars on your Shred with Shifty podcast impacted your approach to playing?

“It has – a lot! The premise of the show is that we’re breaking down one of my guest’s guitar solos. In advance of every interview I have to spend some time trying to figure out how to play the solo.

“First off, a lot of them are just hard and I can’t play them! But even the ones that aren’t as advanced technique-wise, it’s an interesting challenge to try to put somebody else’s phrasing in my hands.

“As guitar players, we’re all kind of doing the same stuff. It’s just our individual feels, where you start the lick; all that kind of stuff that makes your personal style.

“Over the course of a couple of seasons – and we’ve got most of season two in the can now – the idea has been that there’s so much information out there on how to play anything, but it’s almost always wrong!

“The mission was, ‘Let’s go to the source and find out exactly what was played.’ But you do that, and you realize they don’t know! They played it on a record at one point and they don’t remember it exactly.

“The biggest takeaway is that it doesn’t matter; that’s not the point of playing guitar. It’s not about learning anything exactly; but I love putting myself in somebody else’s mindset to try to understand what they did.”

What’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned from a guest?

“I interviewed Wolfie Van Halen, and even though I didn’t fully learn the tapping pattern of the solo we focused on, that definitely inspired me to learn the little tapping bit in Eruption to the best of my ability, and start throwing that into some Foo Fighters sets.”

What guests do you have lined up for season two?

“We’ve got Michael Schenker, Keith Urban, Molly Tuttle, Derek Trucks and a bunch more after that. I interviewed Zakk Wylde just the other day. So there’s some really good guitar players in this season.”

As somebody who’s also shared stages with a lot of legendary players over the years, who has been the most memorable?

“Brian May would be a big one – that was when I first joined Foo Fighters and we played at Brixton Academy. Brian came out and played a song with us. All of a sudden you’re standing next to that dude and you’re like, ‘It’s Brian May! That sounds like Brian May!’

“I love when you play with some of these folks and it reminds you of how much of it’s in the hands. It’s who they are; it’s how they play and it’s that tone.”

Is it difficult to focus on what you’re doing when you’re standing next to people like that?

“Absolutely! When we played at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Paul McCartney came out and we did a song with him. I remember really specifically prepping myself to stay in the moment, look around, breathe deep, take it all in, look at your bandmates, look at Paul McCartney, look at your family right over there.

“And of course, when you start doing that, you start playing the song wrong. So there you go!”

• The Chris Shiflett Cleaver Telecaster Deluxe will retail at $2,499.99 USD / £2,599 GBP / €2,999.

The Beatles have been the subject of some high-profile documentaries recently. In 2022, we had Peter Jackson’s Get Back epic, which charted the Fab Four’s journey in the lead up to recording their last-ever studio album.

This year, we have Beatles ’64 – a hugely anticipated film produced by generational filmmaker and award-winning director Martin Scorsese, which tells the story of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison’s seminal appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. And, thanks to this Disney+ Black Friday steaming deal, you can watch the doc – and a ream of other Disney titles – from as little as $2.99 per month.

Few gigs are as famed as the Beatles’ New York turn from 1964, which was eternalized on The Ed Sullivan show. The first of three performances in February that year was viewed by 73 million viewers – making it the most-watched event of its time – and is considered to be the catalyst and cultural watershed moment that triggered Beatles hysteria (or ‘Beatlemania’) in the US.

Beatles ’64 – which is available exclusively on Disney+ – throws viewers into this formative time of the Beatles career, documenting the aftermath and cultural impact of the band's historic trip to New York for the gig.

Directed by David Tedeschi and produced by Scorses, Beatles ’64 is currently receiving rave reviews – it is sitting with 97% on Rotten Tomatoes – and should be considered essential viewing for all Fab Four fans.

For Black Friday, Disney+ is offering some bundle deals for new subscribers, the best of which lets you get both Disney+ and Hulu (both with ads) for just $2.99 a month for a full year. That represents a huge saving over the regular rate of $10.99 a month. To put that into perspective, this bundle will help you save a grand total of $96 over the course of 12 months.

Once signed up, you also have access to the rest of the Disney+ catalog, meaning for just $2,99 a month (that’s less than a cup of coffee) you’ll never be short of Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic, or Pixar titles to choose from.

For more Cyber Weekend discounts, be sure to keep it locked to our Black Friday guitar deals page, where we'll be showcasing the very best deals from across the internet.

Duff McKagan has seen it all, done it all and survived it all – by the slightest of margins. The stories of his escapades as the bassist of Guns N’ Roses, a band whose members practically had their humanity ground out of them by sheer fame and debauchery, are legend.

Fortunately, Duff was in control of his intake during the band’s glory years, resulting in the classic Appetite For Destruction and Use Your Illusion double albums, on which the bass playing is a thing of rock ’n’ roll beauty. “My drinking never got in the way of writing bass parts,” Duff told Bass Player. ‘I was writing music with other drunks at the time! So we were all on the same playing field.”

Like his bandmates, the hell-raising stories about McKagan are numerous. And yet these frankly unnerving escapades seem worlds away from the now 60-year-old bassist who’s spent the last few years touring with the reformed Guns N’ Roses alongside guitarist Slash and singer Axl Rose.

“Axl was never a drunk, but he was never around for the writing of the music. He would come in once something was done. On Appetite we didn’t have a PA in our rehearsal room, so he couldn’t sing stuff even if he wanted to. But Slash and I have been songwriting partners for the major part of my career.”

We could fill pages with bullet-pointed lists of the mad things that Duff did before 1994, when a brush with death caused him to clean up, sober up, get ridiculously fit and go on to a very productive post-GNR career.

In a YouTube interview for Beneath The Bassline, Duff recalled the time his belt buckle gave him a problem during a Guns N’ Roses show.

“I had this killer Chrome Hearts belt that I wore for every gig. And we had this grated stage that we would take all around the world with us, but if it got wet out then that stage would get slick. One show I slipped and the belt got stuck in the floor. We were in the middle of a song!

“I had roadies help me to take the belt off, but it was like that moment in the film where the mini Stonehenge comes down.”

The interview also finds McKagan looking back on the band’s appearance at London’s Live 8 event in 2005, and in particular, meeting Paul McCartney.

“There was a lot going on backstage. There was the Who, Madonna, and Pink Floyd were going to play. We hit the stage, and there’s Paul McCartney. He looks at me and he says, ‘Hey, Duff.’ You only play three songs, so there’s no time to warm up and you’ve got to hit your nut real quick, but all I can think is, ‘Paul McCartney knows my name. How the hell did that happen?!’”

While McKagan's punk-rock roots are well documented, his childhood musical education actually has its foundation in R&B heavyweights like Sly and the Family Stone. At the same time as he discovered punk, he also discovered Prince.

“Meeting Prince was the most freaked out I've been. He was on the Diamonds and Pearls tour in Berlin, and we had a night off, so we went and saw him. Suddenly some big dude says, ‘You can come back and say hi.’”

“I only started playing bass when Guns N’ Roses started, and at first it was more like Prince’s bass playing,” McKagan told Bass Player. “He played bass on his first four records and he had a high-end to his sound. I incorporated that into my sound in Guns N' Roses, which you can hear as early as Appetite for Destruction.

“It's all there, and you can hear the nice round bottom, like a full bottom, but very pronounced. I was at that age when I played drums, guitar and bass, and this guy was only six years older than me, making his own records and playing everything. I was completely enamoured by him.”

He’s enjoyed Britpop glory with Ocean Colour Scene, shared space with Paul McCartney at Abbey Road for a ‘90s redux of Come Together, and backed Paul Weller for ages. But what makes Steve Cradock most proud are the relationships he’s formed through making music.

“Being friends with the people I’ve worked with means a lot,” He tells Guitar World. “They’re my closest friends. We’ve never lost it to insanity or musical differences or any of that Spinal Tap bollocks.”

But to be in the biz is to be subject to madness – and Cradock has seen and taken part in his fair share… like smoking shaved-off bits of Jimi Hendrix’s guitar wrapped in pages of the Bible while demoing Ocean Colour Scene’s Moseley Shoals. (More on that later.)

He’s just completed a tour with Weller, and Ocean Colour Scene have big plans for 2025. But Cradock remains modest when asked how he’s stayed afloat.

“Luck,” he shrugs. “Everyone needs a bit of that.” Of course, there’s more: “You have to take it seriously. You have to take it with a pinch of salt as well. Both are important – and I still really love music.

“Music blows my head on a daily basis. Just listening to stuff, and the vibration of it lifts me and speaks to me. I’m in awe of that. Music makes us all better. Whatever your favorite thing is, there’s a vibration that helps us on our way.”

You’re known for your Gibson SG, but you also use Teles too. Does that come from your love for Steve Cropper?

“I suppose so – it’s difficult to say. I’ve got a cream-colored Telecaster that looks similar to the one Steve Cropper uses. He’s not what you’d call a guitar virtuoso, and that’s why I like him. I like the fact that he’s a great guitar player who doesn’t shove it down everyone’s throat.

“And I prefer the look of Teles to Strats. Strats are a difficult guitar to play, I think. You have to be a better guitar player than I am to cut it on a Strat, I think!”

What differing purposes do the SG and Tele serve for you?

“They’re hugely different; and both are beautiful guitars. For starters, the SG has the whammy, and that’s the main thing for me. And you’ve got all the bollocks about whether it’s a humbucker of a single coil, but I don’t think that’s the reason you would choose a guitar.”

What do you look at when choosing?

“I don’t think about the pickups; I think about what feels right. To be honest, it’s just instinct. I just know. I’ve been playing long enough to know what guitar I need to use for what song.”

If forced to choose, are you going Gibson or Fender?

“I’m a Fender guy at the moment because I’ve been on the road a lot with Paul. It just seems to work. I don’t use it on every song. Fender has helped me out with a couple of guitars, which was very kind. I’ve got some fantastic Telecasters.

“I’ve got a new blue one… see, I don’t even know the model number! I’ve got a blue one and a green one, and they’re sick. They’re so fucking good. I’ve been playing them a lot.”

Do you prefer new guitars to vintage ones?

“I’ve got a ’72 Tele that I’ve had for many years. This new blue one takes a while to play in, but once you’re in on it, I think it’s as good as my ’72. It’s probably not worth as much, but playing-wise and sound-wise, I think it’s as good.”

Are you still mainly using Blackstar amps?

“Blackstar started when four lads who used to work at Marshall all left at the same time. In Birmingham around 2000, Joel Richardson came to see me with the prototype Blackstar. As soon as I plugged it in, I was like, ‘This is the amp I want to use.’ I’ve used them ever since their first prototype. And the new St. James is just fucking incredible.”

How does your current rig compare to the ‘90s rig that you recorded Moseley Shoals with?

“For the first couple of Ocean Colour Scene albums I was using a Marshall JCM800. And I had my Gibson Les Paul and my Telecaster. In a way nothing’s changed, because the Blackstar is kind of modeled after the JCM800!”

Did you use a similar rig while working with Paul McCartney on The Help Album [for the charity War Child in 1995]?

“Oh, that was amazing – what a day that was. I was actually using Paul Weller’s Epiphone Casino. It was a ’66 Casino on that, Come Together, and I would have been going through his Marshall Bluesbreaker.”

How did you end up in the session with Paul?

“I was told that there’s a charity set up by Go! Records, and was asked to be on it. We all turned up and laid down the backing track. Then they told me that maybe Paul McCartney would be coming down. That day just opened up into the most incredible thing.

“Paul McCartney is just a fantastic guitar player. It was kind of a beautiful afternoon, where even Johnny Depp and Kate Moss showed up. It was all kind of fancy, really!”

What was your biggest takeaway from the experience?

“Well, gratitude. It was for War Child – and we’re talking about fucking pop stars and bollocks, really. But it was with great musicians who I love, right?”

Would you call that your most memorable studio experience?

“That’s a difficult question. I guess it was; but there’s been so many moments. I’m trying to rack my brain, but that would be a hard one to top. We’ve also had other days of beautiful creation of our own music that have to be close behind that.”

There’s a story that when Ocean Colour Scene were in a studio owned by a member of The Move, there was a Hendrix Strat on the wall, and you scraped a bit of the finish off, mixed it with some weed and smoked it.

“That’s true. We smoked Jimi Hendrix’s guitar – fuck! Roy Wood from The Move wasn’t there; it was actually a guy called Bob Lamb. This would have been 1990 or 1991. Bob jammed with Jimi Hendrix and was a drummer in Trevor Burton’s band. He had what he claimed to be a black Stratocaster that was owned by Jimi Hendrix.

“There were no pickups in it; it was just the body of the guitar on his wall. So, I thought it’d be fun to crumble a bit of the wood off and pop it inside a spliff.”

Did anybody object?

“I can’t remember! It was just one of those stupid things you do, you know? It seemed funny. And this is probably not good to hear in America, but we used a page from the Bible as the paper to roll it up with. We got a nice verse out of Psalms and skinned up the guitar.”

Were you hoping to imbibe some of the spirit of Hendrix into your playing?

“No – I mean, he’s untouchable. I love Jimi Hendrix. We did it because it was stupid. But I can confirm that, yes, it did happen.”

Was the band actually recording that day or just hanging out?

“We were always hanging out and we were always recording. We’d have been doing demos; we’d accumulated up to 50 tracks, which served to be the majority of Moseley Shoals and Marchin’ Already.”

Would you say that was your wildest studio experience?

“Oh, certainly not! We always kind of went full tilt into recording sessions. There was never a dull day!”

Is that energy and spirit what made those records great?

“You need to have good songs and arrangements, don’t you? To be fair, without a really good song, we’d be fucked. It wouldn’t have the same weight. I stand by the recordings and the arrangements. They stand the test of time, I think – I hope.”

What’s next for Ocean Colour Scene?

“We have a big 25-date tour for next March and April; and then we’ll be doing a new album, which is the first album in like 10 or 11 freaking years or something.”

• Check out Ocean Colour Scene’s 2025 tour dates.

Paul McCartney’s headlining set at Mexico City’s Corona Capital Festival this past weekend featured two special guests – Jack White and St. Vincent – who joined him for his show closer, a raucous rendition of The Beatles’ The End, in front of nearly 82,000 attendees.

The performance marked the ex-Beatle’s debut at a Latin American music festival and, according to promoter Ocesa (via Billboard), attracted the largest crowd the festival has seen in its 14-year history.

As fitting for two stellar guitarists, White and St. Vincent soloed their way through the song alongside McCartney – who was also wielding a guitar by this point – and his two guitarists, Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray.

Best of all, the historic moment seemed to double as an off-the-cuff jam session, with McCartney pointing to the different guitarists at random, prompting them to show off their soloing skills.

Gear-wise, White could be seen wielding a custom black, yellow and white Triple Caster Telecaster – a nod to the signature (and more accessible) Triple Caster he released this September with Fender – while St. Vincent played her Stealth Black signature guitar. McCartney, meanwhile, began the song on piano before switching to a left-handed Gibson Les Paul.

Earlier that night, St. Vincent joined a Hofner violin bass-playing McCartney on lead guitar duties for an equally high-octane rendition of Get Back.

While it was White’s first time ever sharing the stage with the former Beatle, St. Vincent had previously collaborated with him on Women and Wives from his 2021 remix album, McCartney III Imagined.

As expected, McCartney’s set list was packed with Beatles favorites, including A Hard Day’s Night (1964), Let It Be (1970), Hey Jude (1968), Blackbird (1968), and Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da (1968).

With his participation in Corona Capital, Macca wrapped up a busy week in Mexico as part of the South American leg of his Got Back tour, which kicked off in Uruguay on October 1.

In other Paul McCartney news, Richie Sambora recently revealed that The Beatles and Wings co-founder had a hand in mixing one of the tracks on Bon Jovi's One Wild Night live album.

Working with one of the Fab Four is an extraordinary feat for anyone – but an instance of Bon Jovi, one of the most enduringly popular bands since the '80s, collaborating with Paul McCartney is nothing short of historic. According to a new interview with ex-Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora, McCartney had a hand in mixing a track on one of the band's live albums.

“I was in Henson [Recording Studios in LA], which was A&M at the time,” Sambora tells Howie Mandel [transcribed by Ultimate Guitar].

“We were pretty popular, so, I'm the guy that likes to go around the studio and go, ‘Who's in today? What's happening?’ ‘Don Henley's over here in B, and Sting's doing his thing over there. And then Paul's in there.’ I go, ‘Paul, who?’ ‘Paul McCartney.’ I had never met a Beatle in my life. I was probably almost 40.”

The two were working in different studios, but Sambora recalls being eager to meet McCartney. While mixing a Bon Jovi record, he found himself “peeking out the door, waiting for Paul to walk in.”

“It’s like two hours now, he’s not showing up. So I walk out of one studio to go into the other overdub studio to actually do some overdubs on this live thing. I walk smack into him, and he goes, ‘See you’re practicing, are you, mate?’ And he takes the guitar, and he’s lefty and I’m righty – he takes the guitar and starts to play it.”

As Sambora tells it, the two sat down on a couch and got along like a house on fire, so much so that “they had to pull us apart.”

“We just got into talking to each other so much. So, then he had to go into his respective studio, and I was in my respective studio, and I looked back, and Paul’s got one of my guitars, and he’s kind of messing around with it, right? And I’m mixing, so I said, ‘Well, if you’re going to be in here, why don’t you help me mix this?’ And he did.”

While Sambora didn’t specify which track Macca helped mix – and the Beatle went uncredited – he confirmed that it was a track from One Wild Night Live 1985–2001, Bon Jovi’s live record released in May 2001.

In other Richie Sambora news – Guitar World recently dug up a 2013 interview with the former Bon Jovi guitarist in which he looked back on the band's disastrous first arena engagement: an opening slot for ZZ Top at Madison Square Garden.

Top-tier session bass guitar player Sean Hurley has worked with some of the biggest names in pop and rock, including Gwen Stefani, Lady A, Lana Del Rey, Robin Thicke, and Alanis Morissette, solidifying his status as a staple of the LA session scene.

One of Hurley’s most prominent gigs is his ongoing collaboration with John Mayer – a recording partnership that began around 2011 after he had completed “one or two tours” with Mayer.

Hurley then joined Mayer, drummer Aaron Sterling, and pianist Chuck Leavell at New York’s famed Electric Lady Studios to record Queen of California and the Born and Raised album.

“When you’re at ease with an artist, then all the good stuff starts to flow out,” Hurley tells Vertex Effects. “Because you’re not thinking about, ‘Do I have to play something that proves I’m worthy of being there?’ You just play to accompany the song.

“So John had that [Queen of California] riff, and he just started playing it. All we had was just that B chord. He just started playing it. And every time I have the opportunity to play bass, if possible, I try to redo Taxman, Come Together... something in the Paul McCartney [style of playing], like, ‘Is there a way to play a root, a flat seven, a fifth, and kind of twist around those notes?’

“And lo and behold, that was the first time John played something and I was like, ‘Ooh, I can do something [around] the roots and flat sevenths.’”

As Hurley puts it, once that was locked in, it was like “the engine room that keeps spinning” and everything after that was just “syncopation, rhythmic stuff”. His instinct proved correct, as, although it was only the first idea he had for the song, it worked.

“He [Mayer] liked it, and we just started letting the song develop from there,” he concludes.

Hurley went on to lend his low-end expertise to some of Mayer’s most celebrated tracks on Born and Raised (2012), Paradise Valley (2013), and Mayer's latest release, Sob Rock (2021).

In recent John Mayer news, the guitarist shared behind-the-scenes snippets as he composed his latest collaborative lead effort with R&B mega star Alessia Cara.